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This series of SCANDINAVIAN CLAssics is published 
by the American-Scandinavian Foundation in the 
belief that greater familiarity with the chief literary 
monuments of the North will help Americans to a 
better understanding of Scandinavians, and thus serve 
to stimulate their sympathetic co-operation to good ends. 








THIS VOLUME IS ENDOWED BY 


S S. PETERSON 


R. CHARLE 


M 


OF CHICAGO 


THE BOOK ABOUT LITTLE BROTHER 


A STORY OF MARRIED LIFE 


BY 
GUSTAF af GEIJERSTAM 


a 


TRANSLATED FROM THE SWEDISH WITH 
AN INTRODUCTION BY EDWIN BJORKMAN 


NEW YORK 


THE AMERICAN-SCANDINAVIAN FOUNDATION 
LONDON: HUMPHREY MILFORD 
OXFORD UNIVERSITY PRESS 
1921 


Copyright, 1921, by The A merican-Scandinavian Foundation 


fs Peterson, The Regan Printing House, Chicago, U. S. A. 


EL 77S) 
Bia Ss” 
: a ee 


CONTENTS 


bana bas INTRODUCTION Vv 
AUTHOR’S INTRODUCTION XLII 
THE BOOK ABOUT LITTLE BROTHER I 
CHRONOLOGICAL LIST OF WORKS. | 235 
LIST OF FOUNDATION PUBLICATIONS 237 














GUSTAYT AE GEIJERSITAM 


HE entire nineteenth century was marked 
by an increasing literary and artistic 
awakening in the three Scandinavian countries. At 
the beginning of that century, their literatures were 
still local, in spite of the appearance of such poets 
as Tegnér in Sweden, Oehlenschlager in Denmark, 
and Wergeland in Norway. Long before the 
century ended, those three literatures had assumed 
universal importance, and in the drama particu- 
larly, the Scandinavian countries were recognized 
as leading the world. © 
The reasons for this seemingly sudden but long 
prepared development were, as may be guessed, 
many and complicated. In the main, however, it 
depended on a re-discovery of the national spirit 
through a study of the past in the light of modern 
science and thought. The movement that produced 
Ibsen and Bjornson, Georg Brandes and J. P. 
Jacobsen, Strindberg and Ola Hansson as its first 
-and foremost flowers, sent one root down into the 
old sagas and another into the actual life led by 
the mass of the people in Norway, Denmark, and 
Sweden. It was the result of a constructive com- 
parison between the characters of the old saga 
heroes and the characters still shaping and guiding 
the every-day history of three living and striving 
nations. 


vi INTRODUCTION 


If the Scandinavian literatures of the early 
nineteenth century deserved the epithet local, the 
explanation lay in the fact that they still, on the 
whole, represented imitations of foreign models 
in Scandinavian dress. When Ibsen and Bjérnson 
had fought their way to understanding of their 
own true natures, and when Jacobsen and Strind- 
berg, standing on the shoulders of those pioneers, 
sprang into full-fledged achievement out of seem- 
ing nothingness, the literatures of their making 
- drew both contents and form out of the native 
soil. Ibsen’s “Be thyself’? was the sign in which 
those literatures conquered, and it is still the sign 
in which they continue their onward march. 

The leaders, however, would have availed little 
without followers. Greater as their brightness 
undoubtedly was, the names mentioned above were 
not the only ones worthy of universal record and 
remembrance. Around those chieftains stood, in 
each of the three countries, a host of writers second 
only to them in importance, and often great enough 
in themselves to have won wider fame, had they — 
not been overshadowed by greatness surpassing 
their own. Among these a conspicuous place was 
held by the man whose work hereby for the first 
time is introduced to the English-speaking world. 

Gustaf af Geijerstam lived so largely in his 
work, and all he did was so closely identified with 
it, that a few lines might suffice for the external 


GUSTAF AF GEIJERSTAM Vil 


facts of his career. He was born on January 5, 
1858, in the Swedish province of Westmanland, 
where his father owned and operated some iron 
works. An economic crash forced the father to 
seek a new career, and his academic education 
enabled him to obtain a position.as public school 
inspector. His sons, of whom Gustaf was the 
eldest, were brought up in the little city of Kalmar 
on the southeastern coast of Sweden. Across a 
narrow strait lies, like a breakwater, the long- 


drawn island of Gland, whence later in life 
Geijerstam drew so much of the material used for 


his best peasant stories. 

As a boy of nineteen, Geijerstam went to Upp- 
sala to complete his studies at the ancient univer- 
sity. Two years later he took his B. A. and soon 
after left the place forever, turning to the capital 
in search not only of a livelihood, but of a life 
worth living. This, according to his own confes- 
sion in Erik Grane, he had been unable to find in 
the little academic town, which seemed equally 
symbolized by the Gothic Codex Argenteus, still 
resting in its library, and by the floods of Swedish 
punch streaming through its innumerable student- 
haunts. ; 

About the time young Geijerstam reached 
Stockholm, Strindberg was publishing his Red 
Room. The same year of 1879 brought Ibsen’s 
Doll’s House, while Jens Peter Jacobsen’s Niels 


vii INTRODUCTION 


[*hne appeared in 1880. Bjérnson was preparing 
to break with dogmatic Christianity, and during the 
decade just ending, Georg Brandes had delivered 
those epoch-making courses of lectures at the Uni- 
versity of Copenhagen which are now known to 
the whole world under their common title, Main 
Currents of Nineteenth Century Literature. The 
Naturalistic wave had reached the Scandinavian 
countries, disturbing old and young in equal degree, 
though in widely different manners. Rebellion 
was in the air. Old standards and old principles 
were challenged along the entire line. Life and 
literature, so long strangers to each other, seemed 
to have met at last. 

Like most of the younger men, Geijerstam was 
carried away irresistibly by the new movement. 
The first result of his new enthusiasm was a volume 
of short stories, Bleak Days, which attracted 
favorable attention more on account of their sin- 
cerity than of their art. Another collection of 
stories followed the next year, 1883. At the same 
time Geijerstam published a volume of literary 
studies, Contemporaries, dealing with some of the 
principal leaders of the new literary movement in 
Sweden, Norway, and Denmark. It contained also 
a study of Strindberg, which, although most sym- 
pathetic, dared to charge his New Kingdom with 
containing ‘“‘matters unworthy of himself,” and 
which, at that early date, quoted against him the 





GUSTAF AF GEIJERSTAM i 


words once directed to another Swedish writer . 
Strindbergian character, “Your writings, Sir, are 
a mixture of genuine truth and private grouch.”’ 

In an autobiographical sketch entitled My First 
Peasant Story, Geijerstam has told us what hap- 
pened to him in that year 1883. He had done 
with Uppsala. He had not yet found what he was 
looking for in the life of the capital. Instinctively 
he turned to the plain people of the country dis- 
tricts for what he could not find in the hectic life 
of the cities. Some sense of community seems to 
have drawn him to the peasant, and more particu- 
larly to the inhabitants of the islands scattered 
along the Swedish coast, half of the soil and half 
of the sea. Hiring a room from one of the peasant- 
fishermen on an island outside of Stockholm, at 
the very edge of the open sea, he proceeded to 
study those people at first hand. He even tried to 
share their food, but found to his humiliation that 
he could barely swallow it and certainly not live 
on it. For weeks he found himself isolated and 
subjected to all sorts of suspicions on the part of 
men and women who had never heard of a man 
living by his pen. But at last his general good 
nature conquered all resistance, and he was taken 
into the confidence of his host and all the rest. His 
first use of the new material was embodied in the 
story named Criminals. With three others, it was 
published in 1884 under the title, Poor People, 


x INTRODUCTION 


and with this book Geijerstam’s position as a 
writer of power and purpose was established. 
The confiscation of Strindberg’s Marriage took 
place in 1884. In order to protect his publisher, 
Strindberg was forced to return in haste from the 
continent to face a criminal charge of blasphemy, 
based on a superannuated and long forgotten 
statute. The trial ended with a verdict of not 
guilty and turned into a tremendous triumph for 
the accused author. But while the matter was still 
pending, the country was shaken as rarely before 
by the conflict of opinions. Almost without excep- 
tion, the writers of the new generation stood by 
the man whom all regarded as the foremost in 
their ranks, and in whom many wished to find a 
recognized leader. But with such plans Strindberg 
had little patience, though he never questioned his 
own superiority. In so far as leadership was in- 
volved at that particular juncture, it fell on 
Geijerstam, and for a while it seemed as if his 
position might become permanent. The appear- 
ance, in 1885, of his partly autobiographical novel 
Erik Grane strengthened his literary reputation 
considerably, not the least by exposing him to furi- 
ous attacks from the leaders of the old school. In 
1885 and 1886, he edited two ‘“‘annual reviews,”’ 
to which contributions were furnished by Anne 
Charlotte Edgren-Lefler, Oscar Levertin, George 
Nordensvan, Ellen Key, “Ernst Ahlgren” (pseu- - 





GUSTAF AF GEIJERSTAM xi 


donym for Mrs. Victoria Benedictsson), Axel - 
Lundegard, Alfhild Agrell, Hjalmar Branting, 
Geijerstam himself, and his hardly less talented 
brother Karl— in fact, by almost everybody com- 
prised within the group of rising talents popularly 
named ‘‘Young Sweden.” If nevertheless Geijer- 
stam’s leadership soon ceased, it was perhaps 
because the forces to be led were far too hetero- 
geneous for any permanent organization. Or 
maybe his own gifts were not sufficient for a posi- 
tion which Strindberg himself, had his inclinations 
been different, would have found difficulty in main- 
taining. Perhaps, finally, Geijerstam’s first ‘mar- 
riage, contracted in 1885, and the need of keeping 
the pot boiling a little faster than before, had 
something to do with his definite turn toward crea- 
tive endeavor. It is the end of that marriage we 
find related in The Book About Little Brother. 
From 1884 to his death in 1909, Geijerstam 
poured out an unbroken stream of stories, novels, . 
and plays, while at the same time, during the 
greater part of that quarter century, he engaged 
in journalistic work or acted as literary advisor to 
one of the big publishing houses at Stockholm. Of 
his plays little need to be said here, although one 
of them, Criminals, based on the short story with 
* the same title, was produced at the Theatre de 
?Oeuvre in Paris. He wrote several amusing and 
successful comedies from modern life, the best and 


X1i INTRODUCTION 


most widely known being Father-in-law. His peas- 
ant plays, which helped to produce the break 
between him and Strindberg — who thought that 
Geijerstam had stolen his own ideas out of The 
People at Hemsé—proved even greater theat- 
rical successes and remain popular on the Swedish 
stage to this day. But they have no importance 
from a literary point of view. Nor does Geijer- 
stam seem to have placed any false estimate on 
their value. It was only as a story writer and 
novelist that he made a mark in Swedish literature 
and produced works worthy of notice outside his 
native country. It is only as such that we need to 
consider him here. 

All that Geijerstam produced in the form of 
fiction falls under four heads: 1) naturalistic 
problem stories; 2) stories of peasant life; 3) inti- 
mate stories of married life; 4) stories of “olden 
time’ (i.e., the 40’s and 50’s of the last century). 
Into the first line he was forced by the tendency 
of the time, yet while he produced some very re- 
spectable results in this field, it was not there that 
he rose to his greatest height. Erik Grane, with 
its strong autobiographical element, was full of 
sincere indignation against the old academic spirit 
that prepared the young generations for school 
and not for life. It was a burning arraignment of ° 
the young people themselves, who had turned from 
romantic vagabondage to cold-blooded self-seek- 








GUSTAF AF GEIJERSTAM xiii 


ing. It represented also a well-meant but not very 
successful effort to seek a cure for the disease of 
the age in the rising of a new “estate,” that of the 
workmen. Equally tired of Uppsala and literary 
Stockholm, Erik Grane becomes a mechanic and 
marries a girl of the people, with whom he is rep- 
resented as “living happily forever after.” The 
later Geijerstam had no such illusions. Although, 
as I have already suggested, the book created a 
great stir in its day and brought its author a rich 
harvest of praise as well as abuse, it was too 
diffuse in form and too vague in thought. 
Pastor Hallin, published in 1887, marked a 
distinct advance in both respects. It is the story 
of a young man destined for the ministry, who 
develops conscientious scruples. Gradually these 
scruples ripen into a conviction of unfitness for the 
career he has prepared himself to enter. But it is 
a career in a preéminent degree, and purely 
worldly considerations prevent him from risking 
it. Against him stand his sister and his fiancée — 
by far the most sympathetic and best drawn char- 
acters in the book — both of whom denounce what 
they regard as a betrayal of his ideals. Late in 
life Geijerstam returned to similar lines in his 
Battle of Souls, where he pictures the snares of 
modern business, and partly in Dangerous Forces, 
where, however, the social problem has become 
quite subordinate to the working out of one of 


XIV INTRODUCTION 


those ill-adjusted individual destinies that always 
caught Geijerstam’s fancy more than anything else. 

It was in his peasant stories that Geijcrstam 
first found himself. Two themes seemed in par- 
ticular to fascinate him in dealing with the humble 
tillers of the soil: first, the cramping harshness of 
their conditions; and secondly, the dark remnants 
of primitive, almost savage instincts that linger in 
their souls ready to break out whenever the pres- 
sure of external circumstances favors their release. 
The key to his conception of the peasant was given 
in his very first peasant story, Criminals, m which 
he wrote: ‘“The population was neither better nor 
worse than elsewhere, and the same was true of 
their education. For most of them life passed 
away in an incessant struggle to find the neces- 
saries of existence, and it was this struggle that 
made the people what they were. Of course, — 
Christianity had prevailed for more than one 
thousand years, and it was said that it had softened 
the customs, disposed of superstition, and im- 
proved the people. But thinking of it in his solli- 
tude, it seemed to the pastor as if, with a few 
modifications, everything remained as it was pic- 
tured in old legends about bygone generations. 
The same savage nature lived on, unbroken and 
destructive, in spite of church bells, hymn singing 
and popular schools . .. Hunger and love— 
that was the whole story.” ) 








> 


GUSTAF AF GEIJERSTAM XV 


White Winter, in the second volume of stories 
named Poor People (1889), is an epic of the life 
led by those humble toilers on outlying and stone- 
strewn farms that face conditions from day to 
day which even the dwellers in a metropolitan 
slum district would find unbearable. When illness 
comes to such a place after the snow has fallen 
day and night, night and day, for nine whole days, 
then tragedy is in the air, but of this nothing is 
known to those most nearly concerned. Like dumb 
animals, they take what comes, of evil or of good, 
as something inevitable that has to be borne with- 
out protest or complaint. 

Of the same type, but relieved by a strong ele- 
ment of humor, is Peter with the Eye in the same 
volume. It is the story of a boy, naturally ugly, 
who has been made conspicuously so by an acci- 
dent to one of his eyes, and who thus becomes an 
object of mirth and ridicule to everybody that sees 
him. He grows into a strong man and a hard and 
faithful worker, well able to take care of himself. 
But the nickname from his youth sticks, and while 
no other man cares to apply it, the women dare, 


and they have no use for him on account of his — 


looks and his timidity. Yet the same desire burns 
within him as within the handsomest man on earth. 
_ In his despair, he fastens his affection on a girl of 
notoriously loose manners, and in the end he gains 
her —when lovers are getting scarce. Even then 


ve? ee INTRODUCTION 


she refuses to give up her old habits, and he does 
not interfere. To his old father, who comes to 
protest, he replies briefly that as long as he was 
satisfied, others could have no ground for com- 
plaint. Some might call Peter strangely modern in 
his views. Certain it is that Geijerstam created a 
remarkably consistent and convincing figure that 
leaves in the reader’s memory a sense of admira- 
tion not at all lessened by the accompanying smile. 
Sammel, who gives the name to one of the best 
stories in Forest and Sea, is first cousin to Peter, 
though at once more tragic and less attractive in 
his characteristics. He is a sailor boy, with an 
unquenchable love for the sea, who gets caught on 
shore by an unpremeditated love affair. The at- 
tempt to make a farmer of him is futile, but even 
when he gets a pilot’s certificate and is able to 
spend most of his time on the water, his old long- 
ing and his sense of being captured and impris- 
oned will not leave him. Envied by others, and 
never satisfied himself, he lives in a conflict be- 
tween duty and inclination that gradually leads 
him to the bottle, to poverty, to public scorn, and 
“to a search for ‘‘compensation’”’ that turns him 
first into a brute and then into a child. 

Asa rule, however, it was the still darker strains 
in the primitive mind that lured Geijerstam and 
held his main interest. He seemed fascinated by 
those stories of almost unbelievable crimes now 











GUSTAF AF GEIJERSTAM .- __ »xvii 


and then reaching a startled world from little iso- 
lated farmsteads. Parricide in The Sheriff’s Tales 
is a typical example of this phase of his writing. 
Many have called it his best peasant story and 
termed it classical in its fatalistic tragedy. The 
story is very simple in its outline. A wanton 
woman, married to a kind and decent man of good 
standing, conceives an almost inexplicable, but far _ 
from impossible, hatred of her husband. Having 
tried to poison him and failed, she gradually goads 
her two sons into murdering their father under 
the most brutal circumstances. How she leads 
them on, step by step, to that point, and how they 
behave under the burden of their own crime, forms 
the main part of the story, which has a great deal 
of compelling power. What it lacks is some sort 
of psychological explanation that would make the 
reader grasp why the woman had to do what she 


did. The same thing applies to most of Geijer- — 


stam’s stories of this type. It is particularly true 
of Nils Tufvesson and His Mother —the novel in 
which he dared to take for his theme the inces- 
tuous love of a peasant woman for her. son and 
the subsequent murder of the son’s wife at the 
behest of the mother. Based on an actual hap- 
pening, which the story closely follows, that story 
tells us in substance: This is what they do at times, 
but heaven only knows why! Geijerstam wrote 
before the psychology of Freud had become suf- 


Svili : INTRODUCTION 


ficiently developed and known. For this reason he 
had to be content to apply the epithet of ‘“‘mys- 
terious’’ to many an action for which we can find 
motives to-day. And yet this was the case only 
when he dealt with the life of the peasants, where 
he thought himself particularly at home, thus 
giving new emphasis to the cry of Georg Brandes 
that writers should deal only with the life actually 
known to themselves. The case was different when 
he began to write about married life among people 
of his own class—or shall we say, perhaps, about 
his own married life? 

What I have just said is well illustrated by a 
story that stands midway between his peasant 
stories and his stories of married life. It is Love 
in the collection named Forest and Sea (1903). 
The man and woman at the centre of the story 
are of peasant class, but this fact is wholly sub- 
ordinate. It is a study of a man’s desire for a 
woman who can give him devotion, affection, 
motherly care, and so on, but who, for some reason 
unknown to herself and unrevealed to us, can 
never give herself fully and wholly either to him 
or to love. After the man has been married twice, 
the second time most disastrously, she consents to 
become his wife in order to save him from a third 
marriage like the second. The result is what might 
be expected —a perennial conflict of irreconcilable 
instincts —and yet both conclude on the edge of 








GUSTAF AF GEIJERSTAM xix 


the grave that they have been happier than they 
would have been apart, and that they have given 
and received to the utmost possibilities of their 
respective natures. As it stands the story is won- 
derfully told and wonderfully true. It lacks ex- 
planatory background, so to speak. The young 
woman is what she is—a miracle, or a mystery, 
or a monster —and with that we have to be satis- 
fied, although what we want most of all is a sug- 
gestion of the causes that made her what she 
became. To be sure, a similar lack may often be 
felt when Geijerstam deals with related problems 
within his own class, but it is never so palpable or 
harassing. There are many things in The Book 
About Little Brother which need explanation and 
are left unexplained by the author. The difference 
is* that they are told in such a way, with such a_ 
wealth of detail and background, that we can find 
explanations for ourselves with the help of the 
new psychology. In other words, by the telling of 
such a story in such a way, the author has given 
proof of a knowledge based on an intuitive under- 
standing of personal experience, and not on infor- 
mation received from without. 
The first herald of Geijerstam’s entry into the 
field which is particularly his own—the field ’ 
where I, for one, think him greatest — was a little 
story named Life’s Misunderstandings, in the col- 
lection bearing the common title of Stockholm 


XX INTRODUCTION 


Stories (1892). It is the story of a young woman 
fanatically——the word is Geijerstam’s own— in 
love with her husband. She has loved once before 
with equal intensity—-a young painter who died 
by accident. And the author says in describing her 
peculiar nervous constitution, ‘She might hide her 
inability to forget, but forget she could never.”’ 
_ There is the cue. A chance meeting with a man 
resembling the first object of her young love starts 
a morbid train of thought, out of which gradually 
springs a state of mind that spells disaster. Day 
after day she sees her dead lover by her side, and 
she feels as if she were living in adultery. Her 
normally constituted husband is utterly unable to 
understand; and when he draws back from her in 
a state bordering on hatred, there is nothing left 
for her but to cease living. The situation is more | 
artificial, but hardly less pungent than the situa- 
tions furnishing the themes for Geijerstam’s best 
books in this field. All of them might have for 
a common motto this sentence from Dangerous 
Forces (1905): 

‘The relationship between human beings is very 
precarious. The threads that tie them together are 
imperceptible, but still more imperceptible are the 
- forces which corrode those invisible ties, making 
them rot and break.” 

That story marked a departure more radical 
than the mere development of a new subject 











GUSTAF AF GEIJERSTAM XXxl 


matter. During the first ten or twelve yéars of his 
literary career, Geijerstam was frankly and rather - 
aggressively naturalistic in his methods as well as 
in his professions. Considering his later develop- 
ment, it seems safe to assert that, during the 
period in question, he did constant violence to his 
own nature. Although a practical man, forthright 
in his attitude, and full of fondness for the joys 
and sorrows of the passing moment, he had a 
strong mystical strain in his make-up, and he was 
never himself until that strain came into its own. 
So it did with Medusa’s Head (1895), the first — 
novel he published in eight years. In the mean- 
time Swedish literature, led by Selma Lagerlof, 
Verner von Heidenstam, Oscar Levertin, Per 
Hallstr6m and others—while Strindberg was 
passing through his Inferno period —had turned 
in its entirety from naturalism to neo-romanticism. 
Contemporary critics charged the former stand- 
ard-bearer of the naturalistic movement with 
having changed himself deliberately and forcibly 
in order to remain in the swim. The truth seems 
to be that, just before writing Medusa’s Head, 
Geijerstam passed through a mental and spiritual 
crisis almost as deep-reaching as that of Strind- 
berg, though externally less marked. In fact, it 
struck so deep into the secret recesses of his soul . 
that, for a while, he seriously contemplated desert- 
ing the author’s calling forever. And when he 


ae as INTRODUCTION 


was able to write Medusa’s Head, it meant simply 
that his true nature had conquered at last, and 
that thenceforth he meant to write without ref- 
erence to any rules or tenets not sprung out of — 
the demands of his own soul. That book marked 
a declaration of independence, and not a surren- 
der. Apropos of this book and The Comedy of 
Marriage, Strindberg wrote to Geijerstam in 
1898, “Your development with and after 
Medusa’s Head is miraculous.” 

The explanation of the title is given in the pro- 
logue, where a young poet says: ‘“‘What I call 
Medusa’s head is that we see so much that is wrong 
and mean—that we learn every morning about 
all the pettiness that fills the world.” — 

The head of Medusa is the paralyzing force 
of the small and mean and selfish considerations 
of everyday humdrum life. And only those who 
try to fight it are in danger of being turned into 
stone by its ghastly visage. The rest seek a refuge 
in commonplaceness and join that host to which a 
_ character in another of Geijerstam’s books refers 
as ‘We living dead.’ Like most of his later 
books, Medusa’s Head is a strand woven out of 
many threads. The relationship between husband 
and wife plays a conspicuous part, as I have 
_ already suggested, but the main stress is laid on 
other human relationships. The whole book 
might, in fact, be described as a contrast of two 





a A TNT Be aE 








GUSTAF AF GEIJERSTAM sedi 


temperaments: that of Tore Gam, the hero, who 
perishes in his fight against things as they are, and 
Sixten Ebeling, who, true to his own nature, not 
only refuses to fight, but fails to see why any one 
should engage in such a futile undertaking. The 
latter says of himself in a moment of scathing 
self-realization: “I was saturated with that fore- 
most maxim of life which is called disinclination to 
make oneself ridiculous—a maxim that breeds 
every form of cowardice, from the moral one that 
protects our prejudices and renders us insensible 
of misfortune, to the intellectual one that prevents 
us from crossing the border where our knowledge 
comes to an end.’”’ Of their mutual relationship, 
Tore Gam says in another place: ‘‘What has 
always stood between us like an invisible wall that 
we could not pass was this—to be, or not to be - 
satisfied with the crumbs offered by life; to sur- 
render, or not to surrender; to adapt oneself, or 
to despise such a makeshift arrangement.” 

In spite of much loose writing and some loose 
thinking, the book is characterized by a tremen- 
dous psychological suspense. Especially the latter 
part of it, where the story is told by Tore Gam 
himself, in his diary, grips the reader irresistibly. 
and fills him with a feeling of awe akin to what 
we experience in reading a Greek tragedy. The 
chief weakness of the book lies in a fact that quar- 
rels only with the premises established in the in- 


oe INTRODUCTION 


troduction, but not at all with the story itself as 
later developed: the fact that the main cause of 
Tore Gam’s tragic end lies within himself, in his 
own nature, and not in the petrifying power of 
any social forces hostile to his own fate. There 
is a weak spot in him from the start, probably 
inherited, and perhaps pathological—a spot that 
marks the predestined breaking point when the 
strain between his endeavor and his nature be- 
comes too great. In this conflict between will and 
power, the external world plays a wholly secondary 
part, though one that well deserves attention in 
itself. | 

During the six years from 1895 to 1901 ap- 
peared the five books that to me mark Geijerstam’s 
highest literary achievement, all of them but one 
being intimate studies of the psychology of mar- 
riage — some of them, like The Book About Little 
Brother, so intimate that they called forth angry 
protests on the part of incensed critics. To such 
critics Geijerstam answered in the epilogue to his 
novel Woman’s Power (1901): 

‘Such is the poet, I said to myself. People read 
his work and wonder that he can give himself so 
wholly and unreservedly. They cannot know that 
the extreme candor fretting his heart until it takes 
tangible shape, has been carried so long within 
him that when he gives vent to it at last, it is like 











GUSTAF AF GEIJERSTAM XXV 


an upheaval of nature that takes place against his 
will and can be stopped by nothing.”’ 

The protests seem the more peculiar in the light 
of a certain reticence characterizing all of Geijer- 
stam’s work after 1895. When we hear a work 
charged with being too intimate, we think naturally 
of too frank revelations concerning sexual matters. 
And all such revelations are missing in Geijer- 
stam’s work. The physical facts are merely im- 
plied. What interests him are the psychological 
overtones. The “imperceptible forces corroding 
the invisible ties’? between man and woman may 
have their roots in sex, but they appear under all 
sorts of confusing shapes, and Geijerstam gives 
as they appear—as whimsical, self-willed vaga- 
bonds of thought that come and go like the wind, 
not without cause, not in any lawless fashion, but 
in ways that leave us puzzled and confounded. 
One might almost say that his pet theme was the 
relative insignificance of whatever has the power 
to sunder souls once united by love. This theme is 
plentifully illustrated in the earlier part of The 
Book About Little Brother. Perhaps the author 
wished to indicate the soil in which such matters 
grow, or the atmospheré from which they draw 


_their weird power, when he made the husband in 


that book say as he looked back upon the rela- 
tionship between his dying wife and himself: “‘I 
cherished what she said in accordance with my 


XXV1 INTRODUCTION 


desire, and forgot what she said in opposition 
to it.” 

There are four stories of marriage in the col- 
lection named The Struggle for Love (1896). 
Two of these—Old Letters and The Yellow 
House — approach Geijerstam’s high-water mark. 
The weirdness of the unconscious factors swaying 
so much of our lives is strikingly illustrated in the 
first of those stories, where at times, as in the first 
“part of Medusa’s Head, there is an atmosphere 
strongly suggesting that of a highly subtilized 
ghost story. Those stories are, nevertheless, noth- 
ing but studies for the larger canvases produced 
subsequently. 

Many Swedish critics have declared Lost in Life 
(1897) the biggest book Geijerstam ever wrote. 
It is big, to be sure, but to me it does not compare 
with -The Comedy of Marriage or Woman's 
Power. It is rather out of the line indicated above, 
_ being the story of a workingman who, by the sup- 
posed pressure of external circumstances, is grad- 
ually led to kill the thing he loves most in life, his 
own little son. The book was perhaps meant as a 
social J’accuse, but as in Medusa’s Head, so here 
again, Geijerstam was led astray——or saved — 
by his main interest, which dealt with the work- 
ings of the human mind rather than the short- 
comings of the social organism. Of well founded 
social criticism there is plenty in the book, and 




















GUSTAF AF GEIJERSTAM XXVil 


much of it holds good no less to-day than it did 
thirteen years ago—holds good in the United 
States of 1920 as it did in Sweden of 1897. Some 
of it is artistically warranted because it helps to 
explain why Ivar Lyth, the hero of the book, 
became what he proves to be. Nevertheless the 
book remains a study of individual temperaments, 
rather than of social conditions; of clashing indi- 
vidual wills and desires, rather than of souls 
crushed by the Juggernaut of modern industry. 
What drove Ivar Lyth to his killing of “the thing 
he loved’” was his wife, and not the factory. Had 
they been financially independent, the little boy — 
- who, by the way, is one of the most charming 
among Geijerstam’s many entrancing and life-like 
child figures — had not been drowned by the hands 
of his own father, but I have no doubt that he 
would have perished in some other way, and no 
less logically by the worthlessness of his mother. 
I insist on this fact, not in defense of the modern 
factory, but in order to bring out the real source of 
Geijerstam’s strength as a writer. He possessed a 
fine moral indignation, and a never-failing sympa- 
thy with the downtrodden and unfortunate, as 
practically all of his books witness; but this indig- 
nation was not his chief motive power as:a writer. 
On the contrary, it tended to lead him astray, 
because what, above all else, made him write was 
a passionate love for the manifestations of life in 


xxviii INTRODUCTION 


all its forms, good or bad. It was because he 
loved life so intensely, and believed in it with such 
a persistent faith, that he turned instinctively to 
its darker sides, as if in search of an explanation 
that might vindicate his faith. _ 

The Comedy of Marriage (1898), which 
Strindberg liked and praised, is the story of a 
marriage between two thoroughly good people. 
Its course should have run smoothly from start to 
finish, and it would probably have done so but for 
those strange crotchets of the human soul which 
Geijerstam loved to gather for his psychological 
herbarium. In a moment of unusual intimacy, a_ 
friend of both husband and wife confesses to Bob 
Flodin, the husband, that once he loved the latter’s 
wife with a love known from the start to be hope- 
less. The husband is warned and implored to say 
nothing of this to his wife, but being unaccustomed 
to hide anything at all from his life partner, he 
fails to keep his promise. From that moment the 
friend seems to stand between husband and wife. 
They seem unable to talk of anything else. Jeal- 
ousy plays no part, and yet the chasm between 
them grows wider daily, until one day the woman 
is convinced of being in love with the friend and 
of being unable to live without him. A divorce 
and a new marriage follow. The friend shows 
himself to be what he is, a rather unscrupulous 
and wholly selfish climber, and for the first time 

















GUSTAF AF GEIJERSTAM xxix 


the woman learns what true marital unhappiness 
means. Then her little boy from her first mar- 
riage, who has stayed with his father, is taken 
sick and dies. She is called to his death-bed, and 
at that bed she and her first husband re-discover 
their old love—a love that, in fact, has never 
been dead in either of them. The plot means 
little. The worth and the charm of the story lies 
in the description of what happens in the minds 
of those two human beings from day to day. Par- 
ticularly charming is the picture of the relation- 
ship that grows up between father and son after 
the mother has left the home. From first to last 
Bob is as attractive a figure as may be found in 
‘modern fiction, but he is never more so than when 
he has the vision and largeness of mind to take 
-his little boy into his full confidence concerning 
things generally supposed to be unfit for commu- 
nication to a child. Winning the child keeps the 
worst bitterness out of his heart, and it is because 
he succeeds in keeping it out, that he has a place 
open for his wife when she finally discovers the 
true state of her own heart. 

The end of The Comedy of Marriage is what 
we call happy. So is that of the story named The 
Yellow House, where all that the forgiving wife 
has to say to her recovered husband is, ‘‘How we 
have strayed!’’ Other similar stories of Geijer- 
stam have endings that may be called unhappy. 


XXX INTRODUCTION 


But that is neither here nor there. The ending 
meant so little to him. It was the beginning that 
meant everything—the appearance of those 
strange sundering forces that come out of seeming 
nothingness and sow hatred where love has-grown 
for years. In The Comedy of Marriage he wrote 
of those forces: “It is a dangerous thing when 
two people who have loved each other get to the 
point where both lie awake in the dark nursing 
their own thoughts, while neither one dreams of 
speaking to the other. It is still worse when they 
become mutually conscious of each other. It is 
then the evil thoughts begin to do their work.” 
Why should this be so? There must be an expla- 
nation. Some day we shall find it, undoubtedly. 
Perhaps Freud and his followers are actually on 
the trail. But Geijerstam could only, as he did in 
The Yellow House, refer us to “‘the fate at which 
we stare with a mixture of horror and curiosity, 
and which, nevertheless, we never manage to de- 
cipher.”” What of it? Art should not explain as 
science does, or tries to do. Yet the explanation 
is implicit in art at its greatest, and so.I think it is 
in those of Geijerstam’s books which I am now 
discussing. Some day the explanation he could not 
find will be furnished by the natural progress of 
human thought. 

The hope that such may be the case is strength- 
ened*by an analysis of Woman's Power (1901), 











GUSTAF AF GEIJERSTAM - xxxi 


which book, without going one step beyond the 
proper limits of a piece of fiction, might be sus- 
pected of being written in illumination of certain 
Freudian theories and discoveries. Out of a sense 
of duty that we cannot but call mistaken, a man 
of unusual moral and intellectual refinement mar- 
ries a little shop girl, who, by the merest of 
chances, has become his willing mistress. His step 
is dictated by the coming of a child. The marriage | 
proves disastrous, as might be expected. The 
woman was little better than a prostitute, and such 
she remains in spite of her improved conditions 
and position. Having discovered her in a situa- 
tion that leaves nothing to be doubted, the husband 
sends her to America, keeping their little girl with 
himself. She is another of Geijerstam’s wonder- 
fully drawn children — perhaps the star picture in 
his gallery. So much is introduction. The rest of 
the book has two themes: the relationship between 
the father, Hugo Brenner, and little Greta; and 
the strange, to many almost unbelievable, and yet 
so convincing relationship between Brenner and 
the woman he loved before he was drawn into his 
fatal marriage —to that woman and her husband. 

The relationship between Brenner and his child 
has been made clear by the new psychology. | 
Freud or Jung would probably talk of Greta as 
suffering from an ‘Electra complex.’ Reading 
the book, you feel that Geijerstam has told the 


xaxit = INTRODUCTION 


truth, and that the truth could not be otherwise. 
Recognizing this truth, you realize, too, that Freud 
and Jung must be right. Through the shock given 
to the child’s mind at its most receptive period, 
when understanding had just begun to develop, 
and through the solace found in the father’s pas- 
sionate love, the little girl’s affections have become 
prematurely developed and set so sharply in direc- 
tion of the father that, were she to live a hundred 
_ years, there would be no place for any other love 
in her heart. It is one of the sweetest and tender- 
est and saddest stories I have ever read. The 
devotion and the jealousy of that child heart, with 
its wild craving to make good what the mother 
broke, are equally touching and equally convinc- 
ing. One reads of it with a gasp, as one tries to 
picture the inevitable future. And when death 
mercifully steps in and solves the problem, one 
feels a relief that no so-called happy ending could 
bring — because one feels that any other ending 
of that childish romance would have been either 
impossible or unendurably tragic. 

The relationship of Elise and Karl Bohrn to 
each other and to Hugo Brenner embodies an 
unusually audacious conception of emotional pos- _ 
_ sibilities, but one which, however improbable it 
may seem, should need no apologies in the light of 
what we are gradually discovering about our- 
selves. Should any defense be required, it will be 








GUSTAF AF GEIJERSTAM XXXIli 


found in Geijerstam’s immaculately delicate treat- 
ment of the matter. There can be no doubt about 
the extent or intensity of the love which man and 
wife harbor for each other in this strange triangle. 
Yet Karl Bohrn finds himself irresistibly forced 
into other relationships whenever the strain of his 
business becomes uncommonly marked. These re- 
lationships are quite temporary. They render him 
unhappy, but he has learned that resistance is 
futile. The thought of his wife worries him in 
particular, but he cannot speak of the matter to 
her. She knows, and she suffers to some extent, 
but chiefly because he does not speak to her, and 
because she is thus prevented from helping him. 
Elise, on her side, has carried the image of Hugo 
Brenner in her heart ever since she first met him, 
and her love for him burns steadily through the 
years in spite of her unquestionable affection for 
her husband. In the same way, Brenner has loved. 
her, and continues to love her through anything 
else that might befall him— and the first time he 
becomes clearly conscious of the lasting character 
of this attachment is on his wedding night, when 
he finds himself alone for the first time in his new 
home with his little shop girl bride, whose true 
nature has not yet had time to reveal itself. When 
he and Elise meet again after years, she at once 
becomes his friend and support during the time of 
his heaviest ordeal, when the nature of his wife 


XXXIV INTRODUCTION 


irresistibly carries her from bad to worse. And 
when the crisis comes, Elise becomes as much of 
a friend to Greta, while the relationship between 
her and Greta’s father remains the same as before: 
both knowing that they love each other, and 
neither one breathing a word about it to the other. 
But when the girl is dead, and when Hugo Brenner 
comes, a broken man, to seek consolation with his 
two friends, then the situation suddenly changes: 
both he and Elise speak, but openly, in the pres- 
ence of Karl Bohrn, and from that day Elise holds 
back nothing from her lover, while her marriage 
continues happily as before. It is of little use to 
discuss whether such a relationship between three 
people be desirable or possible. Were the author 
alive, he might answer that he had taken his facts 
out of life. The story of Lord Nelson and the 
Hamiltons indicates that such things may happen. 
To me, however, the main thing seems to be that 
art has many functions, and not the least important 
one is to serve as an experimental laboratory for 
life. Therefore, the artist has the right to por- 
tray, and we have the duty of considering, any 
combination of human existences and emotions 
that can possibly occur to our imaginations. Should 
the artist overstep the boundaries of the probable 
or propose solutions unacceptable to life itself, our 
own reactions will furnish the one rebuke needed. 
Whether Geijerstam did either in WY oman’s Power 











GUSTAF AF GEIJERSTAM XXXV 


is a question to be decided by each reader for 
himself. be 

From 1901, when Woman’s Power appeared, 
to his death on March 6, 1909, Geijerstam com- 
pleted eight more novels and two collections of 
short stories. Several of these works — especially 
the novels Dangerous Forces and The Old Manor 
and the short story collection named Forest and 
Sea—rank very high in his production, but none 
of them brought any new note or any achievement 
more worthy -of remark than those already re- 
corded. With Karin Brandt's Dream (1904), the 
first one of his “‘novels of olden time,” he entered 
a new field, but his general manner of treatment 
and his outlook on life remained the same as 
before. Even when, as in Dangerous Forces, he 
begins his story with a description of a labor 
parade on May 1 and ends it with a few glimpses 
of the first attempt made by Swedish labor to win 
political results by means of a general strike, the 
author remains preoccupied by the relationship 
between his hero and other human individuals, in- 
cluding his wife, while the social aspects of the 
story merely serve to furnish certain additional 
complications needed to get fuller and brighter 
light on “‘the forces that corrode the invisible ties 
between human beings.”’ The title refers to those 
forces, and not to the awakening workers, al- 
though the cover of the second edition of the 


XXXVI INTRODUCTION 


novel is adorned by a futuristic presentation of 
workers with skull-like faces carrying red and 
black flags. 

During the last fourteen years of his life, be- 
ginning with the publication of Medusa’s Head, 
Geijerstam was one of Sweden’s most popular 
authors. All of his works sold in great numbers, 
and each new one was eagerly expected by the 
public. As far back as 1916, The Book About 
Little Brother had reached eighteen editions. His 
popularity was hardly less great in the other Scan- 
dinavian countries, or in Germany, where several 
serious studies of his work have appeared. So far 
there has been no sign that his popularity is about 
to decrease, either in Geijerstam’s native country 
or elsewhere—a fact that seems to furnish Swe- 
dish critics with a source of perennial surprise. On 
the whole, Geijerstam fared no better at the hands 
of the critics than did Strindberg, although he 
was as widely liked as the other was hated and 
feared. Geijerstam was, above all, kindly and 
affectionate——a man who was hit by a hard word 
as by a bullet. It is said, and perhaps with some 
truth, that one of the main contributory causes of 
his death was the bitter attacks made on him by 
Strindberg in Black Flags and The Gothic Rooms. 
He was a little fussy and a little self-important. 
There was nothing about his appearance or man- 
ner to suggest a great genius. Nor would it be 











GUSTAF AF GEIJERSTAM XXxvii 


safe to class him as such. All through life he 
wrote a little too much with his heart. He was, 
as one of his critics said, ‘greedy of emotion,” and 
he let his emotions run away with him quite fre-— 
quently. He did not condense or polish —no more 
than did Strindberg, and very often for the same 
reason: economic necessity. Even in his best 
works, his sentences are overladen with small 
words, many of which add nothing to the mean- 
ing, while they frequently detract from the lucidity 
of his thought. 

In spite of these and similar admissions, I think 
he must be granted a higher place in literature 
than that accorded him by the general trend of 
Swedish criticism. In his best books, his style has 
a power and a penetration not frequently sur- 
passed. Imagery was not his strong point, but his 
works are full of felicitous expressions, as when, 
in The Book About Little Brother, he said that 
‘‘a ring of dawn outlined the horizon.”” Even when 
the individual sentences might fail to stand scru- 
tiny, they merge into a total unity that rarely fails 
to impress. His story may wander, but when you 


are through with it, you feel, as a rule, that you 


know a great deal more about life than you did 
before reading it. Sincerity and sympathy are 
never missing in his work, and when he remained 
within the field particularly his own, he spoke with 
an authority that seems to have outstripped the 


XXXVili INTRODUCTION 


knowledge of the most carping of his critics. Like 
Strindberg and Ola Hansson—the latter still 
wholly unknown in the English-speaking world and 
not yet fully appreciated in his own country — 
Geijerstam’s intuition revealed to him processes 
within the human mind that only now are being 
analyzed and charted by science. He was not a 
philosopher. He had no world-stirring or life- 
revealing conception of existence in its entirety. 
But his psychological clairvoyance was remark- 
able, and the preciseness and acuteness of his ob- 
servations when dealing with man’s most secret 
impulses make his work worthy of the most careful 
study. He wrote of women and children with a 
loving comprehension that has few equals in mod- 
ern literature; his feeling for the unfortunate 
everywhere burned within him like a consuming 
fire—and it was this fire, I think, rather than 
Strindberg’s merciless caricature, that sent him to 
his grave at the age of fifty-one. His interest in 
criminals, particularly of a primitive type, may 
have been morbid, but it was something far raised 
above curiosity or sensation-mongering. Of this 
phase of his authorship, he wrote in his novel 
| Esa in Life: 

‘“There are human fates which seem so strangely 
impressive that they incline us to pause in their 
presence to pray for the absolution of unknown 
powers. This feeling, more profound than any- 


GUSTAF AF GEIJERSTAM ere 


thing called pity, involves both a consciousness of » 
our own better fortune, and of a connection never- 
theless existing between us and those fates—a 
connection that fills us with horror. .... I have 
always felt myself drawn to the kind of people 
whose lives lie beyond the sphere of ordinary 

human experience. The reason is that, looking 

i. into their fates, I have seemed to stand on the 

| _verge of a possibility hiding the answer to that 
riddle of the sphinx for the solution of which we 
generally pay with our lives.” oa 

Of the book now made available to the English- 

speaking world I have said little so far, and I do 
not intend to say much more, as the reader can 
judge of it for himself. But there is one charge 
made against it that I wish to speak of in conclu- 
sion. It has been called sentimental. Perhaps it is 
in part, but in this connection I think it wise to 
recall how often we brand as sentimental what is 

| merely a frank and unsophisticated recognition of 

| certain fundamental emotions touching the core of 

| all life. It is a book in which Geijerstam told the 

} truth as it came to him at the hands of life itself. 

| The validity of that truth has never been ques- 

i tioned so far as I know. 
| 

i 








EDWIN BJORKMAN. 


New York, May 1, 1921 














er 





‘Such let me seem till such I be; 

Take not my snow-white dress away! 
Soon from this dusk of earth I flee 

Up to the glittering lands of day. 
i There first a little space I rest, 
i Then wake so glad, to scene so kind; 
In earthly robes no longer drest, 





This band, this girdle left behind. 


| And those calm shining sons of morn 

i They ask not who is maid or boy; 

il No robes, no garments there are worn, 
| Our body pure from sin’s alloy. 


| Through little life not much I toiled, 

{| Yet anguish long this heart has wrung, 
| Untimely woe my blossom spoiled; 
Make me again forever young. 


From Goethe's “Wilhelm M site 


(Thomas Carlyle’s translation.) 














AUTHOR’S INTRODUCTION 


NCE upon a time there was an author who 
lived happily with his wife and their 

three children. He was so happy that he did not 
know it himself, and all the time he was writing 
books in great numbers about human unhappiness. 
It was not in love, however, that his chief hap- 
piness lay, or in the joy of fatherhood, which he 
took with naive complacency, as if it were impos- 
sible for parents to get anything but joy out of 
their children; nor did it lie in the fact that, even 
after many years of marriage, the rare bird called 
unbroken youth still remained a permanent guest 
in his home. His greatest happiness consisted in 
never having met or known an evil which he did 
not believe himself strong enough and hale enough 
to ward off. Adversities had shown their threat- 
ening visages from time to time, but only to vanish 
like passing clouds beyond the horizon, leaving his 
sky more clear and pure than ever. So he believed 
at least, and this belief was the reality in which 
_ he lived. Against poverty he fought a perennial 
battle, but so far he had always managed to keep 
it at bay. There was only one enemy against 
whom he had never measured his strength, and 
the name of that enemy was Death. Not the least 
part of the man’s happiness was, perhaps, that for 


xliv BOOK ABOUT LITTLE BROTHER 


a long time he never seriously feared that death 
might overtake himself or those nearest to him. 

Moved by this sense of life’s richness, our 
author oncé wrote a book full of summer sunshine, 
dealing with his two big boys, their games and 
pleasures, their adventures and mishaps. The 
writing of it became a game to him, and harking 
back to that time, I can hardly grasp that the man 
of whom I am thinking was myself. 

When the book was printed and bound, and 
when everything was ready for the story to pass 
out into the wide, wide world, the author took 
home a few copies of the eagerly expected work. 
He wrote the name of Olof in one copy, and that 
of Svante in another, and handed them solemnly 
to the two sons thus immortalized. 

Olof took his book, and so did Svante. This is 
said to have been the first occasion when Olof, 
who has a practical nature with no literary ten- 
dencies, sat down to read a book of his own free 
will. I almost believe that he read three whole 
chapters. Svante, on the other hand, read the 
whole book through in a single sitting. Then he 
picked out certain chapters which he liked par- 
ticularly and read them aloud to any one who cared 
to listen. In a word, the entire house was full of 
rejoicing. 

But another little boy was running around the 
rooms at that time. He was Olof’s and Svante’s 











BOOK ABOUT LITTLE BROTHER  xly 


smaller brother; he had long, curly, flaxen hair, 
and the biggest blue eyes that any little boy ever 
possessed. His name was Sven, and he was only 
two years old. He was still a little behind in 
speaking, but not in understanding. 

When Svante read aloud to him, mamma used 
to ask Sven, “Do you know whom the story tells 
about?’ And when Sven did not know what to 
answer, mamma would continue, “About your big 
brothers. Don’t you understand that, Nenne?”’ 

Sven was generally called Nenne, you see, and 
the name was his own invention beczuse he could 
not pronounce the letter s. 

“The book’s names aren’t brothers’,” Nenne 
objected. 

“Stupid!” said Olof. ‘“That’s just the way he | 
calls us.” 

Then Nenne understood and asked, his eyes 
burning with impatience, “Anything about 
Nenne?”’ | 

At that moment papa came out of his own room, 
picked up his pet and raised him to the ceiling.. 
Putting him down again, he said: ‘What could 
there be about a little chap that never did a thing 
in his life yet ?”’ , 

Sven persisted nevertheless. He used his big 
blue eyes to the best possible advantage. He poured -. 
out kisses with his little red mouth. He fought 


xlvi BOOK ABOUT LITTLE BROTHER 


with every weapon at his disposal. He must have 
a book all to himself. 

‘But Nenne can’t read.” 

-This argument made no impression whatever 
on Nenne. He ran from room to room, his vivid - 
little face all aglow with eagerness. Olof got a 
_ book, and Svante got one. Why should Sven alone 
be left without? 

There was no help for it. The author did not 
have another copy left, so mamma gave up hers. 
When her name had been properly erased, papa 
wrote solemnly on the front cover: 

To little Nenne 
from Papa. 

Then, and then only, was Sven satisfied. 

That is to say, he appeared to be satisfied, be- 
cause he made no more protests. All he did was 
to read his new book. He could read backwards 
as well as forwards. Sometimes he held the book 
upside down. And he read aloud so that the 
echoes rang through the whole house. 

Finally he sat silent a while, thinking hard. 
Then he started running through the rooms as if 
he could not reach his goal fast enough. He ran 
straight to papa’s room, where papa himself sat 
in a cloud of smoke at his writing desk. Making 
himself so small that he could squeeze in between 
- papa’s chair and the desk, he poked up his head 
and tried to look into papa’s face. 








BOOK ABOUT LITTLE BROTHER  xlvii 

‘What is it, Sven?” said papa, who didn’t like 
to be disturbed. 

Sven would not give in until the chair was 
_ pushed back so that he could get up between papa’s 
knees. Looking up at papa’s face, he said gently 
but firmly, ‘Papa write book Nenne only.” 

“What?” 

“Papa write book Nenne only,” the little fellow 
repeated, raising his voice a little higher on each 
word. 

Then papa understood. 

It had hurt Little Brother not to be included 
in the book. Small as he was, he had his own claim 
to justice. Small as he was, he thought, perhaps, 
that he had as large a claim on papa as the other 
boys. Small as he was, he knew that there must be 
a place for him wherever papa, mamma, and his 
brothers were. He looked at papa with big ques- 
tioning eyes, and he was as eager as if it had been 
a case of life or death. 

Papa also took the matter very seriously, and 
answered, ‘‘I promise to write a book some time 
about you, too.” 

‘“‘Nenne only,” persisted Little Brother, thereby 
clearly indicating the main point of his request. 

‘“‘Nenne only,” replied papa earnestly. Right i is 
right, you know! 

Little Brother ran off, yelling: out the news as 


xlviii BOOK ABOUT LITTLE BROTHER 


far as the kitchen. In that moment his rehabilita- 
tion was complete. 

Nor did he fail to keep papa reminded of his 
promise. But an author has so much to write 


about. He cannot sit down any minute to write © 


about a little golden-haired chap who has done 
nothing in life but run around making everybody 
feel happy. In poetry as in life, the small ones 
must wait because the big ones will not let them 
by until their turn comes. 

That is the reason why Little Brethes had to 
wait until now for his book. To-day I am another 
man, and everything about me is changed. Little 
Brother did not know what he asked of me—no 
more than I knew what I promised. 

But at my ear I hear a voice that compels me to 
keep my promise. 


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SEED ER A RANA, lH 

















PART ONE 
Chapter I 
HIS whole book is a book about death, and 


yet it seems to me to deal with happiness 

rather than unhappiness. It is not unhappi- 
ness to lose what you love, but to spoil it and defile 
it. There is another secret for the mastery of which 
I had to live a long time. Love never stands still. 
It must either grow with the passing years, or de- 
crease. And it is not in the latter case alone that 
suffering comes. Mightiest of all is Eros when he 
brings suffering because of his constantly increasing 
strength. 

But I must begin from the beginning and tell 
everything that is to be written in this book as one 
tells a dream. And strange as it may seem to the 
reader, it is all part of the book Little Brother 
asked me for. 

Have I dreamed that I ved ac and 
begot children? Have I dreamed that I was un- 
speakably happy and unspeakably unhappy? Have 
I been dreaming? Or have I really lived through 
what seems a mere reminiscence of some other 
human life projected within my horizon? It seems 
to me now as if, in some incomprehensible manner, 
I had come to stand—not above; oh, no, any- 
thing but above—but rather beyond it all. And 


Oy . BOOK ABOUT. LITTLE BROTHER 


thé only thing: reaching me now is a note of wor- 

ship so ineffable that not even music could grasp it 
and give it tangible expression. Yes, it seems to 
me as if I might hope that, some day, when I have 
written down what is now groping its way toward 
the unwritten sheets in order to become a book 
perhaps, the story itself will give me the key to the 
riddle that is now plaguing and worrying me— 
that it will tell me what 1 in my life was dream, and 
ee reality. 

I am not weighed down by sorrow alone, you 
see, but also by wonder at what happened, the 
selfsame wonder that stirs at the bottom of all 
conscious life. . . .°. 

At this moment I recall coming into my wife’s 
room one evening and finding her brooding over 
a book that lay open before her. She was reading 
it, and her face expressed dissatisfaction. 

I leaned over her shoulder and saw that she 
was reading the Bible. The open pages contained 
a chapter of Genesis. In answer to my question 
what she was reading, she merely pointed to a 
couple of lines which I still seem able to see at the 
bottom of the page. And I read these words: 
“Cursed is the ground for thy sake .... In 
sorrow thou shalt bring forth children... .. 

“It is horrid,” she said. ‘‘I can’t recall whether 
I bore my children in pain. I have never given a 
thought to it.” 








BOOK ABOUT LITTLE BROTHER 7 


She rose and went over to a little bed that stood 
crosswise behind our own beds. She bent down 
over the round and rosy face of a child that slept 
and gurgled with lips moving as if it were at its 
mother’s breast. 

‘Did I bear you in pain?” she said, as if speak- 
ing to herself. ‘No, in happiness I bore you 

. in happiness and jubilation .... a hap- 
piness so namelessly great that I did not realize it 
until now.” . 

She pulled me down beside herself on the sofa, 
put her head on my shoulder, and curled up within 
my arms as if seeking protection against the whole 
world’s heaviness and sorrow. Without changing 
her position, she reached out her hand and closed 
the book. 

“It is a stupid book,” she:said. ‘I have never 
been able to understand it.”’ 

‘T should not call it stupid,”’ I said with a smile. 

‘That’s what you yourself have called it,”’ she 
said, raising herself a little. 

“T? Never!” 

“Well, then you called it something else. ”. She 
settled back again. 

“I don’t remember. I only know that I wish to. 
think like you, to believe like you, to be like you, 
because there is no one else like you in the world.” 

Such words no man can answer. It is not neces- 
sary to deprecate them, because they are not meant 


8 BOOK ABOUT LITTLE BROTHER 


as a burnt-offering to one’s conceit. They come 
like caresses, as when a man looks upon his wife 
and says, ““[o me there is no woman but you.” 
For that very reason my wife continued after a 
pause so brief that I hardly noticed it. 

‘“T never thanked you, I think,” she said, “for 
teaching me to believe as you do, but I am glad 
you did. You can not feel it as I do. You can 
never have the same feeling. Every passing day 
makes me richer. Every hour seems full of my 
own happiness. It seems so strange to think now, 
that once, when I was younger, I longed for death 
in order to reach heaven. What did I have in 
mind then? What did I long for? It seems I have 
forgotten it as if it had never happened. The only 
thing that appeared heavy for a while was the 
thought of not seeing my dead father again. But 
now I don’t seem to ask anything but to live with . 
the boys and you. I cannot even wish that there 
be any other life than the one you and I are per- 
mitted to live together. I wish to live with you 
until the boys grow up and go out into the world. 
Then we shall grow old together, you and I, and 
beyond that I cannot think.” 

‘Don’t you believe in any ponity of another 
life?” I rejoined. 

She shook her head energetically. ‘“‘No,” she 
burst out. “I want nothing but what is. Some time 
I shall want to be put to sleep in the ground, under 








BOOK ABOUT LITTLE BROTHER 9g _ 


a beautiful, flowery mound. To me that is all 
there is, and for that I pray to the Lord every 
night.” 

She prayed to the Lord every night, and she 
did not believe in immortality! I knew it, and 
once more I sensed the wonder of her own par- | 
ticular riddle, which to her was nothing but matter- 
of-fact reality. I patted her shoulder to let her 
know that I had heard and understood. 

Then she asked with a sudden transition of 
thought, ‘‘Do you believe anything else ?”’ 

‘T neither believe nor disbelieve.” : 

She repeated my words tonelessly, although she 
had heard them many times. She repeated them 
as if they implied something quite incomprehen- 
sible. Suddenly she burst out, ‘Then you have 
changed your mind.” 

“T don’t think so.” 

“Yes, you have. If not, how could I believe 
that life ended with death? It was you who taught 
me. Why can you no longer believe as I do?” 

As she spoke, a memory flitted across my mind. © 
I saw her and myself walking under the bright 
birches on one of the islands outside of Stockholm. 
The stars of heaven were twinkling above us, and 
in the grass at our feet glimmered faint reflections 
of the light in the windows of our first summer 
home. It seemed that I could still hear the words 
whispered between us in the stillness of the night: 


10 BOOK ABOUT LITTLE BROTHER 


words about life and death, about God and the 
hereafter; words that drew depth and passion from 
the intoxication of our first love. I remember that 
she asked questions and I answered. I remember 
that she became deeply depressed and silent while 
she pondered my answers. And now, when this 
memory flashed across my soul with a vividness 
that words cannot express, it seemed to me that 
what I said then must have struck her in a manner 
not really intended by me, and a pang shot 
through my heart as if, involuntarily, I had done 
her some harm. 

She interrupted me by saying: “I cannot grasp 
what it is neither to believe nor disbelieve. I must 
do one thing or the other.”’ 

The tone of her words seemed to beg me not to 
contradict her, and I did not. I kept within myself 
the mood of that bright island of our youth, won- 
dering all the while that I could see the stars 
through the leafage of the birches. 

My wife rose while we were talking and stood 
again beside the little, bed. In the midst of our 
talk she had noticed that the boy stirred. She 
picked him up, closing her arms about him in ¢he 
quiet, protective way of which mothers alone are 
capable, and placed him at her breast. Her face 
shone, as she looked at him and felt him drinking 
her milk, with the indescribable confidence that is 


@ 








BOOK ABOUT LITTLE BROTHER 11 


the soil out of which springs the scnse of commu- 
nity between mother and child. 

What we had just talked of and what I now saw, 
mingled strangely and became as one in my feeling, 
while I recalled the words that had started our 
brief conversation. I sat a long while thinking of 
what to say. I thought of the cruel words: “Cursed 
is the ground for thy sake;’”’ and of the words 
added about the poor ground itself: ‘“Thorns and 
thistles shall it bring forth.” The feeling of what 
I had and what I saw before me overwhelmed me 
to such an extent, that I was afraid to speak lest 
I betray my emotion by tears. At the same time I 
tried to keep my own thoughts from shaping them- 
selves into words, lest I appear affected to my wife. 

At last I picked up the Bible and put it aside. 
“You are right,” I said. ‘“The harsh words are 
wrong. It should read: ‘Blessed is the ground for 
thy sake. Grapes and roses shall it bring forth.’” 

And having said this, I kneeled down and placed 
my head so that it touched my wife and my child 
at the same time. With her free hand she patted 
my hair. 

Ah! We were young then—young and very 
happy. 


Chapter II 


_] HAVE not mentioned my wife’s name so far, 
and I still find it hard to do so. In my thoughts I 
sometimes name her Mignon, because it is the only 
name that enables me to see her as she came and 
went. And for that matter, how can I know 
whether I am now painting herself or the memory 
left behind? Can a woman be what she seems 
to those who have never seen her as perhaps only 
one person is capable of seeing her? Is not her 
innermost being made up of the very essence that 
remains when all that is superficial and accidental 
has faded away? Is it not possible that what many 
call an idealization is the real innermost likeness 
— that it is what, in a world not reached by human 
vision, will become our real self, and as such 
visible to all? | 

She was small and slight of stature. The first 
time I saw her was on the street, when we were 
casually introduced to each other in the light of a 
street lamp. After we had parted, I retained the 
memory.of a pair of wonderfully large and deep 
eyes. Otherwise I recalled nothing but a neckpiece 
of black fur, a pair of long black gloves, and the 


pressure of a hand that carried with it a sudden, . 


strong sense of sincerity, alertness, and truthful- 
ness. Otherwise I recalled so little of her appear- 


ee Nee ere 








BOOK ABOUT LITTLE BROTHER 13 


ance that I passed her on the street a few days later 
without recognizing her. Yet I had no peace on 
account of those eyes. They returned again and 
again in my imagination, luminous and sorrowful, 
fraught with something that was at once greed of 
life and reverence. If ever a pair of eyes mirrored 
a soul, hers did. 

As I think of all I have experienced through 
my wife, I know that, during all the motley years 
of my life, no one did more than she to preserve } 
my religious feelings; and yet I don’t think I ever | 
heard her mention-the word religion, and it would | 
probably have been possible to fool her into con-/ 
fusing Abraham and the Apostle Paul. But all\ 
that found a place in her thoughts or feelings 
became sacred to her in some peculiar way. Her 
being was all tenderness, and the life she craved 
to live was a feast—a feast at which her sense 
of the worth and sanctity of life could bear no 
dissonance.. But all that was strong and vital 
within her, was also frail and fragile. There dwelt 
at the bottom of her soul a passion for complete- 
ness that could not brook life because it seemed to 
rest on a higher plane than life itself. 

We had been married many years when, one 
day, she said to me in the sudden, casual, seem- 
ingly irrelevant manner that characterized all her 
most deeply felt utterances: “You must never, 
never let me feel that anything between you and 








14 BOOK ABOUT LITTLE BROTHER 


me has become old and accustomed. The day that 
happens I shall die.” 

Many women have said ic same thing, and 
_many have lived to laugh at their own words. But 
' I remember having heard of a woman who said 
to a man: “Don’t you think there may be a few 
women who really feel what all women say?” 

This question came to my mind at my wife’s 
words, and in recognition of the truth behind them, 
I merely pressed her hand. I understood that what 
she said represented her most profound convic- 
tion, and I knew that in this ease the thought of 
sentimentality was out of place. But I could also 
see that she looked to me for a word in response 
that would have real meaning, and so I said: 
‘Don’t you think there are things that may be- 
come old and accustomed without losing in strength 
or joy or sacredness?” 

She looked at me with big eyes as if she wished 
to look straight to the bottom of my soul. Then 
she came up to me and kissed me, and I saw that 
her eyes were dim, and I felt her whole being 
surge toward mine in.a burst of tenderness. ‘Let 
it become old and accustomed then,”’ she said. ‘‘I 
long for it.” | 

Not another word was spoken. But all that day 
I could see that she was full of quiet, silent jubi- 
lation. The same afternoon she was in the garden, 
and through my open window I could hear her 


. Sit ts + 





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BOOK ABOUT LITTLE BROTHER 15 
singing to herself — singing in a rich voice, clear 
as a bell. | 

A little later she came in to me with an artfully 
composed nosegay of meadow flowers, where all 
the bloom of summer mingled harmoniously as 
did the notes of her song. Without a word she 
put it on my table, smiling silently in order not to 
disturb my work. Then she sat down at the other 
end of the room, and as I wrote I glanced up from 
time to time just for the sake of looking at her. 
The evening sun was shining on her dark hair 
and brightening the colors of her face,- which 
always seemed new and never the same. 


Chapter III 


NOTHING ever became old and commonplace 
between us. I know that this is a big thing to say. 
But it is true. And for that reason I still can 
declare: “‘Blessed be life and all it gave!’ To 
bless life for what it took is still beyond me. 

It happened instead that sorrow came into our 
house, and now I know that it might have parted 
us because I was unable to feel this sorrow as she 
did. But I realize with humble gratitude that it 
never went so far. Yet had human power been 
able to bring it about, even that would have 
befallen. 

I don’t know how soon I saw what was hap- 
pening, but I know that the impression of it is so 
deeply interwoven with the memory of my wife 
that I cannot comprehend my ever seeing her in 
the light of youth and happiness alone. Her health 
began to fail early in life. Indeed, I never knew 
her to be without the seeds of illness. How could 
I nevertheless, up to the very last, for long periods 
at a time, forget that her health was undermined, 


and that those seeds of illness must either develop — 


or disappear? I knew only too well that they did 
not disappear. And yet I never learned to look 
upon her life as a journey toward death in a sense 
quite different from the usual one. Did I pay no 








ee ee ee ee ee eT ee 


Ee ee eee 


Sie a aa Vin 





BOOK ABOUT LITTLE BROTHER 17 


heed to the warnings that appeared? Did I close 
my eyes and ears to the forebodings that flared 
up within me from time to time, like spontaneous 
combustions threatening the structure of my hap- 
piness, which I had thought so safely founded? I 
don’t know if such was the case. All I know is, 
that I was so young when I married that I be- 
lieved love an antidote for all the ills of the world. 
When I beheld Elsa bright and happy, when we 
were together in the woods and on the water, when 
I saw her tanned by the sun and ber white limbs 
washed by the summery waves, then I forgot that 
calamity was possible, and I persuaded myself that 
my fears were so many fancies. Alas! in the end 
I was so practiced in the art of forgetting, that I 
did not want to see. And I dreamt of health and 
long life even when Elsa had been so close to death 
that her escape was a miracle; when, under her 
dress, she carried the scars of the surgeon’s knife; 
when she was always on guard against pain, never 
quite free from it, forgetting it by sheer self-sub- 
jugation in order that she might bring gladness 
and the enjoyment of life to those she loved, to 
her children and to me. 

I remember, however, how very early I per- 
ceived this something that made our marriage a 
long, fluctuating struggle to forget. I perceived it 
in her face when she was alone and believed her- 
self unobserved; and when I first saw it, I thought 


18 BOOK ABOUT LITTLE BROTHER 


there must be something amiss between her and 
me. I used to ask her about it, and it is hard to 
tell whether it was my love or my conceit which 
made me believe that nothing unrelated to myself 
could possibly disturb her happiness. I saw that 
my questions caused her inexpressible misery, and 
yet I questioned her. On such occasions she used 
to smile with an expression as if her soul had been 
far away—an expression | cannot recall without 
pain, because for years I fought to conquer it, 
while in the end it got the upper hand and con- 
quered me. | | 
‘““You must not ask me,” she said once. ‘‘I don’t 
know myself what it is. All I know is that no one 
can understand it.” ) 
The depths into which she was looking on such 
occasions belong to the unknown, concerning which 
all may question without ever getting an answer. 


But how was it possible for me to understand all . 


this? Our life was happy. Our days were joyous. 
Our boys were growing bigger and filled our home 
with their merry clamor. And Elsa was never 
more tender toward me than after I had noticed 
one of those moments of silent sadness, which I 
might properly have called unreasonable if there 
were no other reasons than those that can be ex- 
pressed in words by human beings. 


pa Se ee - a 
ea eo ae a 




















Chapter IV 


BY this time our eldest children had grown into 
big boys. Olof was already attending school, and 
in a brief time Svante, too, would have to try his 
teeth on the hard nuts of the tree of knowledge.) 

It was about this period that the dark hours for 
the first time began to get the better of my wife, 
-so that more than once I could see that she had 
wept. She avoided me in her own quiet way, and 
she did it on such occasions in order to prevent me 
from asking questions. I can never forget the 
anguish that mastered me during this time. It 
slipped into the room at night when I sat alone at 
my writing desk. It accompanied me when I went 
to our bedroom for rest. In the darkness it re- 
mained beside my bed while I lay awake listening 
to my wife’s breathing in order to tell whether she 
was asleep. 

There was silence between us during those days 
—a peculiar silence. We would enter our living 
room and light the lamp, and there we might sit 
without a word and feel the silence rise like a wall 
between us— a wall that no one had built, and no 
one could tear down. And if our hands went in 
search of each other, it was only because they must, 
and because neither one of us could endure being 


t 


20 BOOK ABOUT LITTLE BROTHER 


away from the other, although both could feel the 
distance. | 

Then the boys came in to say good-night. We 
kissed both of them, and we kept looking after 
them when they left. But not a word was spoken, 
and when I turned my head toward my wife again, 
I could feel that she was weeping, although I heard 
nothing. Neither of us could have been more un- 
happy if one or both of us had harbored some dark 


secret, and yet both of us knew that there was | 


nothing of the kind. 


“Are you unhappy with me, Elsa ?”’ I would ask. 


And in response J heard her sob as if moved by 
profound agony, ‘‘Do you think I could live if I 
didn’t have you?” 


a 


SG ma ek i i 


Se I te eR ee a aie 
CRRA SA Ee fs MOOS a ice Sera NDR: Se A 





Cc hapter V 


] CANNOT tell exactly how long this period 
lasted. I know only that I recall it as a protracted, 
horrible winter without snow—a long dark gap 
in our life, which seemed empty and meaningless. 
Since then I have seen my most precious possession 
snatched out of my arms by death. I have seen 
friends die. I have felt myself isolated in regard 
to everything for which I was willing to live or die 
spiritually. But I have never experienced anything 





comparable to th that winter, because then I believed 


that Elsa was slipping away.from-me, and. because 


this | thought was worse-to-me-than- anything that’ 
could have befallen me.atthe hands of other_ 
human beings, or even at the hands of. life itself. 

This season became so bitter because it was the 
only one in my life that hardened my heart against 
her, and this happened because I didn’t understand. 
In the end I withdrew within my own self, as did 
she, for I was overpowered by resentment. At 
length this resentment found utterance, and the 
air about us quivered with hard words. 

One day I surprised her in tears, and with a 
voice no longer my own, I broke out, ‘‘How long 
do you think I can stand this?” 

My words were no sooner spoken than re- 


ee as 


22 BOOK ABOUT LITTLE BROTHER 


gretted, and I shall never forget the expression of 
fear that seemed to turn her whole face into stone. 

‘What do you mean?” she asked. 

“What I say.” 

It was as if an evil spirit had iene through 
my mouth, and I could not check it. All that I had 


suffered rose within me as if to choke me, and I 


felt it a triumph to be able to hurt her. 

“Go, then,” she said. “Go away from me. 
Why did you ever come near me?” 

She was not crying when she left. But through 
my very anger I felt that my unpremeditated words 
had caused her greater pain than I had ever ex- 
_perienced or could possibly experience. Yet I 
| shook off this idea and fortified myself behind 
the narrow pride that makes us seek the author of 
a wrong rather than its prevention. 

‘Tt is her fault if our happiness goes to pieces,” 
I said to myself. “What have I done that she 
should be unhappy and torture me without telling 
me the cause? She does not love me any longer. 
It is the way of life. What is beautiful must be 
defiled. He who has happiness will not be per- 
mitted to retain it.” 

Behind such thoughts I hid my real feelings, 
which all the time were full of her. I believed my 
anger warranted, and | thought that my words had 
received a far harsher answer than they deserved. 
It was the story of the bygone days of Eden, 


« 
m r piety Vanic ite 16) Daca = =o 
A aie ae ae a ea ara SE pS aa aI = AIS ee Zot 3 
ee Shree tad) eee Rt Pesca my 


uN ae eee en a 





eras 








Chapter VI 


IT WAS the only tinie when our happiness really 
was at stake, and I believe that both of us felt 
equally strongly that sinister powers had played 
havoc with our lives. One whole day passed with- 
out a word being exchanged between us. That 
evening, as we were about to retire, we fell into 
each other’s arms and wept dds being able to 

speak. 
' After that everything was as before. Still the 
question burning within me — what is it ? what can 
it be? remained unanswered. I was more calm, 
however, and suffered remorse over my unspoken 
thoughts, while at the same time I seemed to be 
expecting some sort of solution. 

Two days later I found a letter on my table. 

I remember breaking it with a sense of anguish 
as if the paper might reveal some secret that would 
have the power of crushing my whole life. At the 
same time I was on fire with a craving to have my 
question answered: ‘“‘Why is she not happy? Is it . 
possible to be happy and ate! at the same 
moment ?” 

The letter read as Shas’ 

My own beloved: How could such words be 
spoken between you and me? How could it possi- 
bly happen? My first impression was that the sun | 


‘24 BOOK ABOUT LITTLE BROTHER 


had been extinguished and that I should never see 
daylight again. And I brooded and brooded how 
to make you good to me again, and how to make 
all this seem as if it had never happened. 

But then I saw that, in spite of all, you were 
good in your heart, although it didn’t seem so, and 
I began to understand that you never could be any- 
thing else, and that it was only my inability to 
answer your questions that filled you with conflict 
and bitterness, so that you struck blindly without 
knowing that you might hurt me as you did. Even 


now I don’t know how to answer you, but you must © 


not think it queer that I write. I do so merely be- 
cause, if I tried to speak this, I should never be 
able to say more than half of what I wanted. 

There is much within me, George, very much, 
that I shall never speak out, either to you or to 
‘any one else, because I know that I shall never 
be able to say it. I have always been like that, 
George, and I shall remain like that, I suppose. 

Sometimes when I think of how you are to me, 
how you tell everything, and never keep a secret 
nook in your heart, then I feel myself a mere echo 
of you, and I feel so poor that I have nothing to 
give you in return. But when you tell me that this 
is not true, then I feel happy, George, very happy 
and very rich. And I know that I have given you 
all that I can give and all that I have. 

But when you notice that I sit gazing into my 








‘ 
x 
x 
: 
7 
q 
; 
He 





BOOK ABOUT LITTLE BROTHER ~— 25 


own self, as you put it, then you must know that 
I do nothing but what I always have done, even 
when most happy, and long before I knew you, 
and my real life began. And if I weep, you must 
not think that Iam unhappy. What I think of then 
does not make me unhappy. It is only something 
over which I must brood at times because I know, 
and have always known, that it has to come. 

But don’t ask me about it, for I can’t answer 
you. If I could, oh, if I could do that, then my 
tears would cease at once. Perhaps it is nothing 
atall. Perhaps it means only that I am too happy. 

But I want you to believe me when [ tell you, 
that you need never fear that there is anything 
secret and hidden in my soul which I hide and keep 
secret because you should not see it. I cannot show 
it: that is all. 

Therefore, don’t ask me to speak, but love me 
as | am. Love me as your little girl, and your 
friend, who asks for nothing but to walk beside 
you as long as God permits her to live, and then 
to die and sleep in peace, forgotten by all but you. 
You must never forget me, and that is the only 
“immortality” I ask. 

One thing I sometimes desire. It is, that you 
and I were old and grey, and that our children 
were quite grown up. I am the mother to such a 
degree that I wish my boys were grown up, so 
that I might visit their homes and take their small, 


26 BOOK ABOUT LITTLE BROTHER 


small, really small and helpless children in my 
arms and see that there was a little of my own life 
in them, too. My boys are so big now that soon 
they won’t need me any longer. But it would be 
so nice to be old and to spend the time with you 
waiting for the day that is to bring the long rest. 
It seems that I might love you twice as much if 
you were old and grey, so that no one else could 
_ see you as I do, and so that I might think that no 
one else really knew who you were, because no 
one else had ever owned you. 

Now I have told you a great many things, and 
yét not what you asked me to tell. But do not think 
of it, George. Think only that I love you now as 
I have always done, and that what I feel for you 
now is more than words can express, more than 
you yourself can ever grasp. My place is here 
with you, and I have everything that any woman 
ever had or ever can get, no matter how happy 
she might be. Don’t believe anything else, be- 
cause if you do, you will make me more unhappy 
than you can imagine or believe. 

YouR WIFE. 





Chapter VII 


I SAT long with this letter in my hand. The wave 
of tenderness sweeping over me was so tremendous 
that it drowned all questions, and caused me to © 
wander about in my accustomed surroundings, 
where nothing seemed changed or was changed, 
feeling myself far and above the fairy-tale prince 
who was carried on the wings of the west wind to © 
the Island of the Blessed. 

I had asked why my wife seemed so changed, 
and I had not been told. I had merely received a 
new proof of her devotion; and such is love, that 





it wants nothing but itself, and all the _questions it 
may ask besides have no other aim than the cer: 
tainty without which it cannot exist.. This little 
letter, therefore, gave us the key to everything, 
without explaining anything; and having read it, I 
went to my wife full of dumb gratitude, quite 
happy because my faith was restored. 

Nor did we speak very much about the letter, 
but both felt a great relief that it had been written, 
and at night we stayed up much longer after the 
children had gone to bed. I remember how Elsa 
sang during’the time that followed— sang as she 
never sang in the presence of any one but me. I 
sat there and let my soul be caressed by her notes, 
wondering all the time how any misunderstanding 


28 BOOK ABOUT LITTLE BROTHER 


could possibly have slipped in between her and me. 

I don’t know how the days passed. I didn’t 
notice that they grew longer, that drops fell from 
the icicles under the eaves, and that the trees in 
the neighboring park were budding. I rather re- 
gretted that the winter could not last longer, so 
that the lamp might be lighted early and our 
evenings together begin. 

‘Have you noticed,” my wife asked one morn- 
ing, “that I am in better spirits than I was, and 
that I never cry any more?” 

I had noticed. But with the ingratitude of a 
man who has escaped an unknown danger, I had 
enjoyed the change without giving any thought 
to it. “Perhaps you cry instead when no one is 
looking,” I answered, and I could feel a touch of 
my old distrust awakened within me. 

My wife never noticed it. She stood before me 
radiantly young, as if no cloud had ever thrown 
its shadow on her brow.. Upon her lips played a 


_ smile which I seemed to have seen before, but I 


could not remember when. 

‘‘T cry no longer,” she said. And her voice car- 
ried something like a challenge when she added, 
‘“That, too, is one of my secrets.” 

I caught her mood without understanding her 
words. I was satisfied and made happy by a feel- 
ing that life again was smiling and gamboling 
before us. 


AU oo ce ae Cee OME Re eee 





BOOK ABOUT LITTLE BROTHER 29 


This entire period left no other trace on our 
common life than to make it a little more intimate 
and more careful, so to speak, than it had ever 
been before. I no longer can tell how I tried to 
explain to myself this queer parenthesis in a happy ) 
marriage. I certainly did not guess at the time that 
it contained the seed of my entire future tragedy. 


Chapter VIII 


ALTHOUGH she proudly named herself the 
mother of two boys, Elsa was still young. As she 
passed up the avenue on her husband’s arm, there 
was a swing in her step, and while she walked, she 
drew close to me with a movement showing that, 
if anything weighed upon her pretty head, it was 
not age. a 

It was one of those dangerous spring evenings 
in Stockholm, when the sun shines tenderly on 
newly budded trees, when the streets are full of 
people who seem to be at play or to be part of a 
show, when the wayside inns tempt old married 
people into playing newly wedded or engaged, 
when the sky is blue and the ice cakes dance down 
the river, when the winter seems as far off as if it 
could never return, and when the spring promises 
a summer such as never was before. 

It was on just such an evening that Elsa lured 
her husband into walking to a little inn far out.in 
the country, telephoning home not to wait dinner, 
and arranging a little supper for two in a small 
room with white curtains, from which they could 
see the evening sunlight fall between long shadows 
upon trees with pale green leaves. 

This was one of our favorite pleasures; and the 
more rarely we dared to enjoy it, because the chil- 





BOOK ABOUT LITTLE BROTHER — 31 


dren were growing up and could not be left alone, 
the more we treasured it on such an evening, 
fraught with the merriment and the romance that 
are common food to youth, but to age a feast to be 
cherished in memory. ’ 

I recall Elsa particularly well as she was this 
evening. 7 

Her hunger stilled, she curled herself content- 
edly in a corner of the sofa, sipping at her last 
glass of champagne. She resembled a kitten ex- 
pecting to be patted or played with. I sat opposite 
her, reverently smoking a good cigar while I let 
my eyes follow the sunbeams playing among the 


SNR EA TT Me 


shadows of the trees. I felt happy and satisfied, | 


but I had worked very hard of late, and I sensed 
it almost as a disturbance that my wife longed to 
see me surrender to her own mood. She was fever- 
ishly excited. She looked as if she wanted to 
run about the room in romping play, only to let 
herself be captured by me; as if she longed for 


something new and unusual;°as if she were over- 
- flowing with that girlish desire for the immortal 


nonsense of bliss which was one of the things in 
her that I loved most. But I could not let myself 
go, no matter how much I wished to. It was as 
if some evil forebodirtg or some irresistible melan- 
choly was lurking within me and keeping me from 
a wholehearted share in the flight of her feelings. 
Sometimes you remember such things afterwards, 


32 BOOK ABOUT LITTLE BROTHER 


and you accuse yourself of your neglect as if you 
had committed a crime. I still recall that I grasped 
her mood at the time, and what followed showed 
me the path her dreams were treading. 

A little depressed because, contrary to custom, 
our feelings. would not move to a common rhythm, 
she sat silently enjoying the final glass of cham- 
pagne, and while thus occupied, her frolicsome 
thoughts slipped into a mood of gentle dreaminess. 
Gazing at her husband, whose hair already was 
quite grey at the temples, she saw in her dream 
that day of many years ago when both of us were 
being rowed toward a sunlit island, where, behind 
the trees, we could glimpse our first cheerful sum- 
mer home. She looked and looked. The picture 
became so clear and concise that she imagined her- 
self able to distinguish every shrub and tree, every- 
thing, including even the subtle play of light and 
shadow traced by the evening sunlight on the shin- 
gled roof of the grey cottage. She saw the bay 
‘spreading out into a’ blue immensity, but where it 
closed in about the island, its wavelets were rock- 
ing reflections of luminous birches, and of dark 
oaks and spruces that seemed almost black in the 
water. 

She has often told me about the vividness of 
these visionary reminiscences that were so charac- 
teristic of her. And I have a clearer and more 
waking view of her dream now than I had then. 


~BOOK ABOUT LITTLE BROTHER 33 


Beyond all doubt she saw these things; her frol-. 
icsome mood vanished, and I could see her eyes 
brimming with hot tears. With a quick movement 
she emptied what remained in her glass, slid down 
from the sofa, and leaned her head against my 
knees. | 

As if directly affected by her feeling, or as if 
our thoughts had met in the past, when life’s 
dream of happiness embraced us both, I, too, was © 
captured by a wholly different mood. Putting my 
arm quietly about her neck and patting her cheek, 
I said: “What are you thinking of ?”’ 

‘T am thinking of our first summer.” 

At that moment it seemed to me that I had been 
thinking of the same thing. All my fatigue. was 
blown away. Full of emotion, I raised her head to 
me and kissed her on the mouth. 

In a trice Elsa sat up straight. 

For a moment the craving after something new 
and unusual, that could break up the monotony of 
commonplaceness, mixed in her memory with what 


had been; and with a ring in her voice that could 


not be resisted, she broke out, ‘‘I want to go there, 
George! I want to go there!” 
The same moment brought me back to reality. — 


_At bottom, my own mood was perhaps identical 


with that of my wife. But at the same time I expe- 
rienced the peculiar sense of impending disappoint- 
ment that rises within us to check our dreams in 


34. BOOK ABOUT LITTLE BROTHER 


life’s most overwrought moments. I shrank from 
this attempt to bring youth back to life as if I 
feared instead to encounter some grief that I 
wished to avoid at any price. I felt so sure of dis- 
illusionment, that my wife’s innocent project — the 
little journey toward the open sea, the visit to the 
place where I knew every inlet, every strait, even 
the stones along the bottom of the bay — seemed 
to involve something so important and decisive 
that I should have to consider well before I 
formed such a fateful resolution. Yet I perceived 
also that the mere thought of it filled my wife with 
an exultation so great that I could not say no. 
Therefore I said yes, and closed her in my arms to 
hide my own dejection. 

As we walked homeward later, a glimmer of 
youth pervaded Elsa’s entire being. Of what I 
really felt, she had noticed nothing. As if she had 
been aware of walking toward some great happi- 
ness, her features were radiant and reflected in 
all its fullness the vivid feeling with which she 
united what had been with what was. At the 
thought that my sad forebodings might prove cor- 
rect, such a pang of agony shot through me that I 
could not restrain my thoughts. 

“‘Are you sure that everything will be as you 
expect ?”’ I asked. 

She winced, and the expression on her face was 











BOOK ABOUT LITTLE BROTHER 35. 


almost angry when she answered, “Why must 
you always spoil things for me?” 

“Do I really do that?” 

Her good humor returned at once. ‘‘No,” she 
said. ‘“‘But I felt so happy just now.”’ 

I kept silent and merely drew her closer to my- 
self. Her faith made me forget my own misgiv- 
ings, and in my fancy our insignificant little trip 
assumed strange proportions, as when.small neigh- 
boring islands rise above the horizon with the 
fantastic glamour of a mirage. 


Chapter IX 


ONE Sunday morning we sat at last on the deck 
of the steamer puffing its way toward our destina- 
tion. 

Years had gone by during which we had never 
travelled this route — years that had brought good 
and evil; years that had sundered and united. Our 
thoughts had followed separate paths, but now 
they met again. United in a peculiar mystic feeling 
that seemed to defy fate, we sat side by side, while 
place after place passed by, illuminated by the 
bright spring sun and laved by glistening blue 
waters that were rippled by a slight breeze. 

My resistance was quite gone. I surrendered 
completely to my wife’s guidance, and I received 
every impression with an emotion as if I were 
twelve years younger and on my way to new, 
.unknown goals that would change my humdrum 
life and open new vistas throughout my existence. 
My wife seemed rejuvenated like myself. Her 
face was brightened by a tender blush, and her 
eyes radiated the light that springs from happi- 
ness. Her voice carried a note of indefinable ten- 
derness that caressed me with the whole force of 
the illusion that filled us both. Between us passed 
smiles and words, glances and gestures, that usu- 
ally belong only to the initial period of love. 





BOOK ABOUT LITTLE BROTHER 37 


After we had landed at last and had stood alone 
on the pier watching the receding smoke of the 
steamer, we put our arms around each other and 
walked slowly along the road that turned and 
twisted between newly budded hazels and tall 
gnarled oaks on whose branches spring had not 
yet made any impression. It was only then we 
noticed how far behind was all vegetation. The 
sea presses those islands to its cold bosom, sur- 
rounding every reef and rock and islet with an icy 
atmosphere that retards the work of spring. The 
landscape was not green as it was farther inland, 
where groves and meadows bring forth their 
leaves under the protection of those outer islands 
that meet and repulse the harsh northern winds. 
Everything here was bare and cold. On the 
branches of the trees appeared nothing but feeble, 
faintly green buds with touches of yellow and 
brown. The sallows bore catkins. The grass slept 
under dead leaves. The anemones, which already 
were past farther inland, here spread their white 
and blue blossoms beneath the branches of the 
hazels. | 

This very backwardness of nature filled us both 
with a new happiness as if we had been bewitched 
by our own mood. 

“Do you see that everything is behind as it was 


then ?” 


38 BOOK ABOUT LITTLE BROTHER 


‘Don’t you remember that by coming out here 
you get a second spring ?”’ 

And we let our glances measure the wide sheet 
of water lapping this scene of belated spring. It 
gladdened us to watch the gulls, as of old, floating 
in wide curves over the blue waters. We rejoiced 
in their white wings glistening in the sunlight, and 
we stopped to watch their unfettered play as they 
shot through the air and struck the water where 
their bright eyes had spied some prey. 

Hand in hand, like two children, we wandered 
up the slope to a little red house, and we exchanged 
glances that seemed full of secret confidences when 
the same customs guard with a fringe of grey 
whiskers, who used to row for us before, came to 
the door and promised to take us over to the island 
of our youth. 

The journey across the blue waters passed in 
silence. Without a word, filled with the strange 
mood that had mastered us both, and that seemed 
to expand and increase with every newly opened 
vista, we sat with hands joined and let the memo- 
ries flow through us, fully conscious that each one 
knew the other’s thoughts. Never before had that 
journey seemed so wonderful. Never before had 
we seen the midday sun in such alluring glory. 
Never before had the luminous waters and the 
leafy shores mingled so harmoniously with the 
sombre background of spruce forests. And as we 


ee te ee ee ee 


BOOK ABOUT LITTLE BROTHER 39 


approached the little island, it seemed that every 
rock and tree and grove rose not out of the dimin- 
ishing distance, but out of our own memories that 
surpassed reality in faithful preservation of the 
surroundings out of which had sprung the happi- 
ness of our entire existence. 

But once ashore, both of us stopped still, and 
a cry of joy already hovering on Elsa’s lips froze 
into silence. Silently we stared at each other. De- 
pressed by something new and unexpected, which 
we dared not recognize, we walked slowly along 
the narrow path leading away from the point 
where we had landed. | 

What we saw was that the house standing on the 
island had ceased to be grey. It was red. It was 
no longer a spacious two-story house, but a low 
cottage which looked as if the poverty and distress 
of passing years had forced it to make itself as 
small as possible on the site of our former home. 
For a while we stood silent as if trying to. recover 
our breath. , | 

“George,” said Elsa, ‘‘what is this?” 

I had only to point at the old oaks around the 
house. Their branches showed black scars and 
their trunks were scorched. I pointed to the foun- 
dation of stone blackened by soot, to the little 
garden plot all torn up, and to a pile of old 
lumber still left in front of the house. The wood 
was burned and charred, decayed and broken to 


40 BOOK ABOUT LITTLE BROTHER 


pieces. This was all that remained of our former 
home. | 

“There has been a fire,” I said. And my voice 
trembled. : 

Ruins.” 


As if we had both felt our solidarity with this — 


_ spot of the earth, which we had not seen for many 
years, we were captured by a new interest—to 
learn what had happened, what had changed our 
island of bliss and rendered it all but unrecogniz- 
able. This interest seemed to brush away the 
world of dreams that had held us captive so far. 
It enlarged the realm of our -emotions until it 
includéd the lives of those that had lived and suf- 
fered, toiled and struggled in this place —lives 
that time had moulded and modeled so harshly 
that no dreams of bliss retained the power of 
gilding the hard reality. 3 

At that moment, when our thoughts turned to 
the people whom until then we had remembered 
only as a necessary appendage to our own happi- 
ness, the door of the cottage opened. A crooked 
old woman stepped into the sunlight pouring down 
on the threshold and greeted the visitors with a 
smile of recognition. She looked as old as if she 
had come straight out of some ancient fairy tale. 
She leaned on a stick, and her wrinkled face 
showed the twinges of familiar pain when she 
moved her rheumatic body. 


u { 
ae saa eee en Tee ne 


1 











BOOK ABOUT LITTLE BROTHER 41 


‘Tt looks different from what it did when you | 
were here before,” the old woman said. 

Moving laboriously forward a little, she dis- 
closed her old husband, who, as usual, waited be- 
hind her until his turn should come. The old peo- 
ple greeted the two who had dreamed themselves 
young a moment ago. The old man rubbed his 
hands, coughed, and muttered unintelligible words 
as he moved slowly and stolidly from the thresh- 
old to make place for the visitors, whom the old 


-woman had just invited into the house. 


Through the skeleton of an unfinished porch we 
visitors gazed out over the widespread waters 
known to our youth. The garden was neglected. 
The whole house, although new, seemed to be fall- 
ing to pieces. Grass covered the paths along which 
we used to walk. The table and the benches in 
the little bower by the shore were rotting away 
because no one repaired what time and weather 
destroyed. 

Without any questioning on our part, the two 
old people told us how misfortune had overtaken 
them. The old woman did the telling, and the 
old man repeated her words in confirmation. 
Misfortune had come so treacherously and unex- 
pectedly that there was no chance for resistance 
or for aid. 

The fire broke ont one spring day in March, 
when the north wind was blowing briskly and the 


42 BOOK ABOUT LITTLE BROTHER 


ice between the islands was too weak to bear and 
too strong to break. And because of this state of 
the ice, the neighbors on the mainland had to look 
on without being able to help. The two old people, 
all by themselves, carried what they could save 
out of the burning house, and then stood helplessly 
looking on as their home was reduced to ashes. 
Those ashes, which they watched until the last 
spark was extinguished, represented the extinction 
of their last hopes of a carefree old age. Lowly 
was the hut which, after long years, they raised on 
the foundations of the old one. The furniture was 
poor. The surroundings were miserable. And 
they themselves were broken and tired. A single 
day of bad luck had taken all that the previous 
years had built up. 

As if weighed down by the same fate, we two 
who had dreamed ourselves young a moment ago, 
sat listening to the slow, spare words with which 
the old people described the fire that laid waste 
their home. The touchingly matter-of-fact char- 
acter of this story, interrupted by meaningless de- 
tails, and mixed with poor people’s reminiscences 
of lost property, did as much as anything to crush 
the visitors. Thus the glamour of illusion was 
stripped from our own dreams and a quiet, roman- 
tic melancholy seized us. It seemed almost as if 
some of the treasures of life which we had stored 
up and thought safe in our possession, had been 








ilsngiecamenmrani— onan rei a aA + Pe 
Sg Wap ao fete ea eae iil Brey 
Rees it! 5f 


BOOK ABOUT LITTLE BROTHER 43 


burned and destroyed on this little island by the 
open sea, while we, all unknowingly, were living 
our lives and believing ourselves happy. Elsa had 
a feeling of having lost more through this fire-than 
the old people, and I saw, as their story pro- 
gressed, that she had to use great self-control in 
order not to burst into tears. What did furniture 
and clothes and household utensils matter? What 
did it matter that two broken-down people, whose 


lives were spent, sat brooding over the contrast 


between past and present in their simple condi- 
tions, since the difference was so small anyhow? 
What did it all matter in comparison with the fact 
that she should nevermore behold the island of her 
youth as once she beheld it? : 

Those were her feelings, and she turned her 
face toward me, and I had no consolation to offer. 
I was thinking how wrong I had been in not obey- 
ing the behest of my first forebodings and thus 
saving us from seeing.the ruined site of our earli- 
est happiness. But I did not have the heart to say 
so. Instead I put her arm in mine, and silently we 
two walked around the island once more. 

Our case was that of the children in the fairy 
tale who went astray in wonderland and returning 
found that time had left them behind and made 
everybody else old and tired. In dreamy silence 
we sat by the shore and gazed across the waters. 


| * There everything was as before, and sitting there, 


44 BOOK ABOUT LITTLE BROTHER 


we forgot the new building and the ruin behind us. 
We remembered only that for three years we had 
lived by these waters, every summer in a new place. 
Seized with a desire to continue what we had be- 
gun, we decided to go on to our second summer 
home with its memories of two small red houses 
near the edge of the woods and its little lawn, 
where our first boy used to sleep in a white baby 
carriage under a blue canopy. 

We got some one to row us across, and this time 
we knew that we were going toward a deserted 
shore. We made some inquiries in advance, and. 
we learned that here, too, the years had made 
changes eliminating all traces of the past. 

A few years earlier an old fisherman and his 
wife were living on the point where we landed. 
She died one winter night while a blizzard was 
raging about the place. When, not long after, 
the old man’s hour struck, the children took over 
’ the two houses near the edge of the woods, the 
boat, and the storehouse by the shore. 

But these islands have many tales to tell. One 
of them is the tale of the two small red houses at 
the edge of the woods. At the end of the fifty- 
years lease under which the ground was held, the 
real owner took it back, and drove the new occu- 
pants from hearth and home. And so the two 
houses were torn down. The lumber was carted 
away. Now weeds and thistles covered the old 


Ta ae lie al 


BOOK ABOUT LITTLE BROTHER = 45 


potato beds, and the ground itself looked as if it _ 
had also been swept by fire. 

The two travellers in search after traces of their 
youthful happiness stood once more among the 
wreckage of a ruined home. We seemed to be 
pursued by ruins. In the throes of a horrible de- 
jection caused by all these broken illusions, Elsa 
let go my arm and walked across the parched 
ground to the fence, where the gate had been 
torn away and only a pair of rusting, twisted 
hinges remained on the gatepost. 

Leaning both arms against the post and giving 


_ free rein to the constantly changing stream of emo- 


tions that filled her soul, she broke into violent 
crying. She sobbed as if all the misfortunes of life 
had been poured upon her head. She repulsed my 
hand when I wished to pat her. She cried so long ~ 
that I became impatient and insisted that we must 
go lest we miss the steamer. 

She didn’t hear me. Taking me by the shoul- 
ders, she said, “You were right. We should never 
have come here.” 

Then she confessed that she had been thinking 
a long time of this journey, that she had desired 
it for years, and that by some chance—why, she 
didn’t know — she had come to feel that it must be 
made at this particular moment. It had seemed to 
her that we must once undertake this journey, and 
that she could never feel sure of really being happy 


46 BOOK ABOUT LITTLE BROTHER 


‘until she had seen all these places again as she used 
to see them in her dreams. She told me of intend- 
ing, aS soon as we arrived, to ask that we settle 
down in the vicinity for another summer. And she 
knew that I could not refuse her request. But now, 
with nothing left of what had once been hers, it 
seemed as if her hold on life itself had been 
broken. : 

I remained silent during this outburst of de- 
spair, knowing full well that I was face to face 
with one of those fancies or dreams which, to a 
person with a rich emotional life, may literally 
mean more than existence itself. Personally, I 
had, of course, been greatly disturbed both by the 
memories aroused by these places and by the de- 
struction that had overtaken what was once so 
dear to us. But it never occurred to me to connect 
this destruction with anything that, in itself, was 
dear and significant to me. Her outburst of sor- 
row left me quite perplexed. 

I tried the method by which a man usually is | 
able to calm woman’s sorrow. I tried caresses. 
But Elsa pulled her hand away because she saw 

(that my friendliness proffered consolation, which 

| she scorned, instead of the sympathy she sought. 
Her face took on a reserved, unapproachable ex- 
pression as if she had staked her whole being on 
the fancy that ruled her, and would not let herself 
be moved by anything. 











BOOK ABOUT LITTLE BROTHER 47 


She looked about the torn and disordered lawn, 
and with a glance dimmed by pity she said, ‘Poor | 
people!” 

Once more she transmuted her own disappoint- 
ment into pity for the human misfortune of which 
the vacant site bore witness. Once more we sat 
down and let our glances stray over the little slope 
by the edge of the woods that reminded us of a 
whole summer’s untroubled peace. We began to 
talk. And we tried to make our imaginations re- - 
produce the scenes that preceded all this destruc- 
tion. The peasant owning the land, we Conjec- 
tured, went to the young couple who had inherited 
the place. He informed them curtly that the lease 
had run out. The fifty years were gone, and the 
buildings must be torn down. He wanted his land 
back. And yet this was clearly not to his advan- 
tage. It would have been more profitable for him 
to lease the piece of ground again. But he had no- 
ticed the boarders kept by his tenants every sum- 
mer, and his jealousy had been aroused by the 
income they derived in this way. The thought that 
no one should live there had struck roots in his 
brain with the force of a fixed idea. The ground 
must belong to him and to no one else. 

Then the young occupants had been forced to 
tear down the buildings, remove them to some 
other island, and put them up again wherever the 
rich could be persuaded to grant a little space to 


48 BOOK ABOUT LITTLE BROTHER 


the poor. But when the last boat-load was ready 
by the pier, rage seized the man. Insisting in turn 
on what was his right, he grabbed his axe. He cut 
down the trees on what had been his father’s 
ground. He tore up the berry bushes. He 
‘wrenched the gate from its hinges and threw it on 
top of the load. The last thing he did before he 
left was to push the stones of the little pier into 
the water, so that no landing place remained. 
Then he set sail, delighted with a revenge that left 
his enemy no gain. 

We talked of this, but all the time our own 
disappointment lurked behind our words and made 
Elsa tremble. 

“Ts it we that bring misfortune ?”’ she asked. 

I smiled. My wife’s remark seemed meaning- 
less and overwrought. ‘‘Let us go on to the third 
place,” I said. ‘“There we know that everything 
remains as it used to be.” 2 

But Elsa merely shook her head. Rising sud- 
denly, she said, “I want to take our old walk 
through the woods.” 

Without waiting for an answer, she started 
ahead of me. It was as if her former vivacity had 
returned; as if, in a moment, she had shaken off 
the whole weight of other people’s sufferings and 
sorrows; as if she had pushed aside all that kept 
the land of our memories hidden, all the misery 
and agony of life that pursued us throughout this 











BOOK ABOUT LITTLE BROTHER 49 


singular day. She led me straight into the woods 


along a narrow path, where the spruces joined 
their branches above our heads. The path was 
soft and easy to follow. All around us the sun- 
light quivered on damp mosses, revealing vistas 
of trunks and needle carpets. The path led to a 
little cove. Near a steep rock it turned into the 
woods. The trees stood farther apart by the 
shore, letting the sunlight into an open place where 
green things had begun to grow. 

There Elsa stopped and began to peruse the 


trunks of the trees. As I watched her, a long slum- 


bering memory woke within me, too—a memory 
that had been practically forgotten during eleven 
years. | 

It happened one evening while we were still 
living in those houses which since then had been 
razed. It was an August night. Following the 
same path, we had come here to say farewell to a 
pleasant summer. Then my wife took a black pin 
from her dress and stuck it into the bark of a pine. 

“IT wonder if it will be there when we return,” 
she said. 

This memory flashed through my mind and 
made me quite melancholy. At that moment I saw 
my wife run with a little cry toward a small pine. 
She pulled a rusty pin out of its bark. Then she 
threw herself about my neck and kissed me, with 
tears of happiness. 


50 BOOK ABOUT LITTLE BROTHER 


Cautiously she put the relic back into the bark 
of the tree. She didn’t have the heart to take it 
away. Perhaps she entertained a superstitious fear 
of disturbing it. But from the moment she found 


it, the sad impressions of our own disappointment - 


and other people’s distress had vanished from both 
of us. As if this little incident had brought us a 
reassuring message from some good spirits, we 
walked back in a happy mood across the ruined 
places that had yielded nothing but a rusty old pin 
so well hidden that no one could take it away. 

















| Chapter X 
~ Many atime I have thought of that pilgrimage 


to ruined shrines. Many a time it has seemed to 
me a symbol of our entire life. 

But at the hour the incident had an effect quite 
different from the impression left behind in my 
memory. The immediate effect was that we went 
to the third place, which until then my wife had 
not even wished to see. There we rented for the 
second time a summer home, and light-heartedly 
we moved back to the district to which we felt 
attached by means of a rusty pin that no’one could 
take away. 

The summer that followed our spring excursion 
stands in my memory free from any cloud that 
might hide the sun. I worked with wonderful zest, 
and my work progressed easily. Quietly and with- 
out effort I added page after page to the book that 
_ was to appear in the fall. Frequently the dinner 
was on the table when Elsa closed the door of my 
workroom and sat down to hear me read the pages 
I had written during the morning. She sat there 
in quiet and happy enjoyment at seeing the pile of 
closely written sheets grow on the writing desk, 
because she knew who it was that gave life to my 
work. She knew that what I wrote about people 
grew out of long talks between her and me. She 


52 BOOK ABOUT LITTLE BROTHER 


was delighted when I called her a notebook that 
preserved my thoughts more securely than any 
writing could, and that gave them back to me re- 
freshed and renewed. The fact was that when I 
recovered my thoughts from the faithful memory 
that preserved them better than my own, I saw 
them through the magnifying glass of love that 
she applied to everything concerning herself and 
me, above all, to my work. As I read, this fact 
_ made her feel that what she had seen in a sort of 
shapeless mist, had assumed tangible form in my 
writing. She experienced a quaint and subdued 
maternal joy in watching the production of these 
spiritual children of mine, and yet she was jealous 
of them because she imagined that they might 
capture my thoughts to the exclusion of herself, 
our home, our children, and everything else in life. 
In fact, I don’t think she ever guessed that this 
co-operation with her was more precious to me . 
than the writing itself. 

Childish as it may sound, it is true that nothing 
had such power of spurring me jnto spiritual activ- 
ity as being told by her facial expression, which 
could hide nothing, that I had succeeded and that 
she was satisfied. The thought of reading to her 
would be in my mind while I wrote, and this 
thought would drive away innumerable uninvited 
fancies that always try to interfere with the work 
of the pen. But when the reading- was over and 











BOOK ABOUT LITTLE BROTHER _ -53 


we entered the diningroom, we had to laugh be- 
cause the fish was cold and the boys, perfunctorily 
washed, bare-legged and sunburned, looked so 
very hungry and expectant. 

“We have been waiting awfully long,” Olof 
would grumble. ‘‘Where have you been?” 

“We have been reading papa’s book,’’ ‘she 
would say. 

“Couldn’t you do that after dinner?” 

“No, we couldn’t.”’ 

“That must be a queer book,” Olof remarked. 

But Svante, who had not yet learned to spell, 
came to the defense of papa’s unknown book, and, 
as usual, mamma had to arbitrate the conflict and 
calm the troubled waters. 

But what a summer it was! Such a glorious 
summer, full of the joy of work, of sea breezes, of 
bright sunlight and cool moonlit nights! I recall 
it as an unbroken stream of sunshine. I recall how 
friends put up their sailboats at our pier. I recall 
excursions with picnic baskets and brisk summer 
winds and open-air bathing, during which Olof 
learned to swim and Svante rolled about on the 
sandy bottom to show what he might do in the 
future. I recall anniversaries with garlands of 
flowers and verses, with strawberries and wine, 
with long silent walks through the pine forest that 
opened toward a sunlit sheet of water. I recall the 
customs guard with his fringe of grey whiskers, 


54. . BOOK ABOUT LITTLE BROTHER 


who used to sail our boat, laughing until his beard 
shook at seeing a whole family of nothing but 
youth and children. 

How short that summer was, and how early the 
fall came! And we followed the changes of the - 
season with melancholy, seeing how the nights 
grew longer and the days shorter, how the meadow 
was shorn of its glorious blossoms, so that all na- 
ture seemed more bare than before, how the rye 
ripened and the reeds grew tall and thick around 
the shores, forming a dense, undulating carpet of 
green with purple tips where formerly the waves 
had rippled over bare rocks, 

And when the day of departure approached at 
last, we sought out all the places we had cherished 
through the summer for a final visit. We climbed 
the hill with the best view, and we walked back and 
forth along the path through the woods, especially 
after dark, when the stars twinkled between the 
spruce branches. We used practically a whole 
week to say good-bye. We took the boys along on 
a sail around the island, and we talked about the 
book, our book, which was ready and was to ap- 
pear in the fall. For hours at a time we walked 
the narrow path leading from the red house to 
the shore, and every night we tarried long on the 
pier listening to the lapping of the waves which 
sounded less restless than in the spring, but also 
more metallic. 

















BOOK ABOUT LITTLE BROTHER 55 


The last night, when the moon of August was ~ 


well on the wane, we went alone to the pier and 
took out the boat. We let the night breeze carry 
us far out on the black water, across which a yellow 
half-moon painted glittering paths, while around 
it the trees stood black and mysterious, with out- 
lines quite different from those to be seen in the 
daytime. We seemed to sail through a magic 
landscape, listening to the tapping and splashing 
of the little waves against the boat's: bow. We 
flew across the rippled surface.with greater speed 
than ever by day, for the night breeze has more 
power than that of the day, or so it seems at least. 
Without a word or any previous agreement, I 
turned the boat and sailed around the point to our 
bathing place, where we landed on the rocks. With 
hands joined, we walked the accustomed path to 
the stunted pine tree whose rough bark held the 
-rusty pin. We did not need to search for the tree, 
for we had frequently made pilgrimages to it dur- 
ing the summer, and we had no fear that any one 
would touch the tiny object that was so well hidden 
and that seemed to us the sign-manual of our own 
limitless happiness, which had threatened to de- 
part, but had returned. As we stood there lost in 
thought, watching the moonlight drowned by the 
gloom beneath the pines, my wife said, “I can’t 
let it stay. I must bring it along.” : 
Then she pried it loose with careful hand and 


Pe 


56 BOOK ABOUT LITTLE BROTHER 


fastened it in the linen within her blouse. ‘‘Per- 
haps I shall never come here again,” she said, 
‘“‘and I want you to have it when I am gone.” 
Again we were carried away by the night breeze, 
and a presentiment of what I thought would never 
happen filled me with an inexpressible sense of sad- 
ness. I looked at Elsa’s place in the boat. It seemed 
to become vacant as I looked, and I seemed to be 


‘sailing across a sheet of water that had other bor- 


ders than those visible in the sunlight. This feeling 
took such hold of me that I forgot that I was not 
alone, and I jumped as if wakened to a new reality 
at the sound of my wife’s voice. She spoke in a low 
tone as if to herself, and at first I heard her words 
without understanding them. 

“T have thought many times,” she said, “that 
there must be people who must believe in some- 
thing, and from whom it would be criminal to take 
away their beliefs. I am so happy that your belief 
is the same as mine. I don’t wish to do anything 
that you don’t like. I don’t even wish to have a 
belief that is not known to you. But I cannot help 
believing in God. Does that displease you very 
much ?””’ 

If my wife had asked the same question in our 
early youth, it would probably have aroused my 


-combativeness, and I should have launched all 


sorts of arguments against such a belief, which the 
disillusioned tendency of the time had caused me 











BOOK ABOUT LITTLE BROTHER _ 57 


to regard with something bordering on tolerant 
contempt. The years that had aged me, had 
brought me no faith, but my sense of the inviola- 
bility of infinitely divergent individualities had 
killed my last remnant of desire to make a single 
proselyte, even if that one should be my own wife. 
I had no hard and fast belief. My belief was 
merely a groping for the greatest thing of all, and 
even during my earliest youth I had been puzzled 
by the dryness and coldness and poverty of what, 
rather poorly, is called materialism. But as a rule 
I was loath to speak of what remained muddled 
and formless within my own self, and now I felt 
not only surprised but humiliated by my wife’s 
remark. 

‘Why should it displease me?’ was my only 
answer. 

‘How glad I am,” I heard her say, while her 
face. remained almost indistinguishable. ‘“Then it 
won't disquiet you when I tell you, that I still say 
my prayers every night as when I was a child. J 
don’t know to whom I pray. But I make the boys 
pray for you and me and for each other. Do you 
think that is wrong?” 

I fell off a little, left my ince, took my wife’s 
dear head between my hands and kissed her with- 
out being able to utter a word. 

‘My wish is, that there should be nothing you 
don’t know,” she said simply. Once more I was 


58 BOOK ABOUT LITTLE BROTHER 


at the helm. Once more the boat gathered speed, 
and after a while I saw between the trees a light 
that guided us to our home pier. With our arms 
about each other, we walked the narrow path to 
our summer home, and as we were kissing each 
other good-night, Elsa said: “You have made me 
very happy to-night. Oh, you don’t know how 
happy you have made me.” 

I sat up late that night, and I did what I had 
never done while our summer happiness lasted. I___ 
thought of Elsa and myself. Time and again re- 
curred the question why she should have asked 
me if I permitted her to believe in God and to pray. 
This was what she had done. And while this ten- 
der womanliness touched me like a breath of un- 
utterable happiness, I felt a pang because she had 
ever thought it.necessary to ask such a question. 
My thoughts surveyed our youth and all the years 
we had loved each other. It seemed that I -had 
always wished to carry her in my arms. It seemed 
that I had always done so. And now her whole be- 
ing vibrated with a note as if, in the midst of all 
this, I had touched her soul with careless hands; 
as if, unknowingly, I had inflicted a wound that 
might have bled a long time before she dared or 
could let me suspect that she suffered. She seemed 
in some way to be afraid of me, or of my criticism, 
or of both. And I asked myself, why? 

I knew that I could not question her about these 











BOOK ABOUT LITTLE BROTHER 59 


matters, for then she would be certain to put her 
arms about my neck and say, “You! .... You! 
. . . » Never have you been anything but kind to 
me.” | , 

I seemed able to hear the passion in her voice 
as she said this. Yes, I knew that such would be 
her answer, and I knew, too, that she would feel 
everything she said as the ultimate truth, just as I 
knew that otherwise she could not say it at all. But 
this thought did not satisfy me. It was something 
quite different that now occupied me. What did I 
care at this moment whether my wife prayed to 
God or did not pray at all? What did I care 
whether or no she thought this thing or that? 
What she said had struck me like an arrow making 
straight for my heart. Her words had become one 
with herself, with the whole summer now gone by, 
with my sensation of that sail across dark waters, 
of the wind in the woods, and of the moon’s glit- 
tering path across the curling waves. All of it 
melted into.a total impression that sang to me of 


-a treasure that I had won: a treasure that could 


not be divided or transformed, but that would be 
mine as long as I understood that it grew in silence 
for me alone. 

Throughout these reflections I was tortured by 
the thought that, nevertheless, involuntarily I had 
frightened her. It tortured me in spite of her own 
words that still rang in my ears. In my mind I 





60 BOOK ABOUT LITTLE BROTHER 


surveyed everything between us that I could recall 
as having anything to do with this matter, and 
when I could remember nothing of the sort, I con- 
tinued to search my thoughts for what I could not 
find. 

What I experienced was a burdensome sense of 
guilt. What I could not remember was when and 
how I had become guilty. It merely seemed that 
I was and must be guilty. When I entered our 
room to go to bed, I was startled by seeing that my 
wife was awake. But when I lay down beside her, 
she mierely leaned over toward me and kissed my 
hand. 

Never have I seen a happier expression on her 
face. 

















Chapter XI 


AT last, however, the day approached—the 
long expected day when the secret already known 
to me, which had quickened her soul and given 
wings to her hope, would be revealed to all; the 
day when happiness again would take up her abode 
in our home to stay forever. This consciousness 
had helped to brighten our summer — at least, it 
seems so to me now. But just as wonderful as 
everything seems now, when retrospect has 
brought me an explanation, just as simple and nat- 
ural it appeared then, and I was far from guessing 
the entire significance of all that happened to us. 

We had two children before, and I had wit- 
nessed more than one of these touching signs of 
expectant mother joy, which a man in love with 
his wife can never forget. But never before had I 
seen my wife so filled with gladness at what was 
impending. Never before had she gone about in 
such a state of consecrated bliss. Never had she 
understood how to charge our everyday life witha 
holiday mood as she did in the dreary city during 
this gloomy autumn, when it rained all the time, 
and when the whole of life around us seemed heavy 
and hard as never before. 

We had two boys, and this made it natural that 
we should refer to. the little newcomer as “‘the 


ee 


62 BOOK ABOUT LITTLE BROTHER 


girl.” It was her we expected and her we dis- 
cussed. One day when I returned from my work, 
my wife said to me, “It is my angel, George, that 
is coming to save me.” 

I had lived so long in forgetfulness of ever 
being threatened by a danger, that I did not under- 


stand her words at first. “Save you?” I repeated 


mechanically. ‘From what?” 
A strange expression came over her, as if she 
had withdrawn within herself to ponder how two 


persons in love with each other could possibly feel | 


things so differently. ‘Have you already forgotten 
how it was last winter ?’’ she asked. 

‘T thought that was all over,” I said. 
{ “Do you think anything ever is all over?” was 
her retort. And she added, ‘‘Perhaps the little one 


‘that is coming may do what nothing else can do.” 


I thought often of this brief talk, and I tried 
vainly to make it harmonize with the untroubled 
happiness we had experienced during the past sum- 
mer. Was it possible that my wife, beneath the 
sunny light of fortune that colored her whole 
being, carried the seed of a misfortune that at 
some future time would overshadow our entire 
existence? Was it possible? Could she be living 
a dual life? Could she live in the midst of sun- 
light, feeling at the same time that night was close 
at hand? Did her present foreboding or fear per- 


. 
ae SN aN nA Mae Ea ck Ses 8 Petar RIS a - 
Se a Mg ete St GL a Re Ian Otc Ene Me eye ae 


Sas 


Sis 















BOOK ABOUT LITTLE BROTHER 63 


haps belong to the fancies that generally accom- 
pany her condition? 

I tried to find peace in the latter alternative, — 
but was never quite successful. More and more I 
began to see my wife’s entire life in a new and 
different light—the light that finally was to sur- - 
round her completely. 

I cannot describe the feeling of tenderness 
aroused within me by these thoughts, for which I 
could not even find words. And I hardly dared to 


‘believe my own eyes when everything went well, 


and when, after a hard struggle, my wife slowly 
began to recover, having given life to a tiny crea- 
ture for which, from the very start, she reserved 
words that no one else could hear. 

But the girl never came. She was changed into 
a boy, who was named Sven. 











ona re ae sernei  6aar 


any See et so Ti mateteme ee ET 








egy 
328) 
coy 


haves 
Linttedtity 
Hak 


thease 


« 
ia ot ore 
east 


age 
ba ee 
4 











sexiness ila ia BSE OEE TE al Ta ae ve = = ¥ Sa : 
atone rn arte a ig aii s ee AE Sy no geht ME A LA TEA OR 
Septal Ph tain tay ° = 


PART TWO 
Chapter I 


ITTLE Sven grew and became everybody’s 
darling. He had long golden hair, and in 
memory of the girl that never came, his 

mother used to curl it so that it lay in golden ring- 
lets around his little face with the transparent skin 
and the marvelous eyes of an angel. No child 
ever had deeper, larger eyes or such a precociously 
dream-filled glance. No child ever possessed a 
more confiding, caressing little hand, which stole 
into the hand of some grown-up person as if he 
felt sure of safety everywhere because he himself 
was aware of no evil. 

Little Sven was the idol of Big Brother, the 
eldest. Nothing was prettier than to see Big 
Brother, who liked to appear manly and, there- 
fore, disliked any display of feeling, pull Little 
Brother about in a small cart, gloating over his 
happy expression and turning all the time to see 
that he didn’t fall out. The only thing comparable 
to it was to see the same thing done by Svante, 
who in addition enjoyed so much more playing pro- 
tector because, in all his games with Big Brother, 
he was the little boy who had to take orders. Sven 
was so much smaller than his older brothers, whom 


_ he admired and followed, that he always remained 


68 BOOK ABOUT LITTLE BROTHER 


Little Brother, and he was so jolly that the whole 
house gathered about him when something pleas- 
ant had befallen him and his ringing voice or 
bright laughter filled the rooms. Everybody came 
to see his eyes sparkle and his small white hands 
beat the air in ecstasy, to behold this radiant joy 
of childhood that brought sunlight into every 
heart. 

Oh, I wish that I had written this story about 
Little Brother before, so that I could have placed 
it page by page in front of her who knew the brief 
tale of his life better than I, better than anybody 
else. She remembered his every word, every little 
detail out of his life’s book. She lived his life and 
her own as if the two were one. She lived with 
him even when his bright eyes no longer spread 
their light among us. She finally followed him 
- upon the paths where no one may follow until the 
- time is ripe. Had it been possible, she would have 
poured her own spirit into what I wish to say; and 
what I write about a little child would then assur- 
edly have carried the conviction of dealing with 
one still alive. 

Little Sven lived and did everything with and 
for his mother. Her room was his nursery, and 
every morning when papa was away and the big 
boys were at their lessons, Sven would sit on the 
floor and hear mamma tell fairy tales. She knew 
many of them, but there was no tale Sven liked 











BOOK ABOUT LITTLE BROTHER — 69 


better than that about Little Red Riding Hood, 
who went to her grandmother with berries, and 
who was eaten by the bad, bad wolf. He grew ter- 
ribly excited when he thought of the fate of Little 
Red Riding Hood, and he was so frightened by 
the wicked wolf, and so angry at him. When he 
grew up, he would go and look for him, and shoot | 
him. 

Sometimes he and mamma would invent games. 
They played that Sven went away and stayed 
away, and that mamma sat alone waiting for him. 
Then Sven would return, and there was rejoicing 
so great that mamma had to drop her work and 
take him on her knee and kiss him many times. 
And they played many other games. 

Little Sven had many names at home. He was 
called Little Brother, and Nenne, which was a 
name invented by himself, and Chubs, and Goldi-. | 
locks, and all sorts of things. He recognized all 
his names, could enumerate them, and was very 
proud of them. Little Sven never played much 
with other children, and particularly not long at 
a time. He always returned to his mother as if it 
had been the most natural thing in the world. Nor 
did he care if he broke up the game and offended 
the other children. If he only caught sight of his 
mother, he ran away from everything, took her 
hand, and followed her wherever she went. His . 
was a love that surpassed all belief, and that never 


70 BOOK ABOUT LITTLE BROTHER 


cooled, because its object rejoiced too much in the 
relationship to be annoyed by it at any time. 

Sven and his mother had their own little secrets, 
and when Sven whispered to mamma, not even 
papa must hear. If he tried in order to tease the 
little one, Sven cried, ‘‘No, he mustn’t. He mustn’t. 
Tell him, he mustn’t.’” 

And mamma guarded her treasure and kept 
papa at a distance, so that Sven had a chance to 
pour into her ear all he had to say. 

When all was done, Sven exulted in his triumph. 
‘There, you see,” he said. ‘You couldn’t hear.” 
- Then he walked about with his hand in 
- mamma’s, laughing at his father. He called this 
“getting papa’s goat,” and there were few things 
he enjoyed more. . 

I can still see them, whenever I wish, hand in 
hand, walking back and forth along the gravel 
path starting by the lilac bushes — walking under 
bare trees in the winter, when Sven was dressed in 
his little fur coat of which he was very proud, and 
which had been made for him out of mamma’s old 
one because he was so frail. It would be hard to 
decide which one of the two had most to tell the 
other. And if, after looking at them a long while, 
I wished to join them, Sven became jealous and 
puckered up his little red mouth in a manner that 
compelled mamma to rebuke his behavior toward 
the head of the family, and to tell him how nice ~ 











BOOK ABOUT LITTLE BROTHER 71 
papa was. This Sven did not like to admit at such | 


times. And as we walked together, he managed 


to make signals to mamma which papa was not to 
see, just as if it pleased him to maintain the magic 
circle of intimate confidence which he had drawn 
about his love and himself, and within which he 
brooked no intrusion. 

But when papa had gone to the city and re- 
turned, then it was Sven who stood behind the door 
waiting for a real chance to scare him. There he 
took up his place long before the time when papa 
was expected home. Time and again he would 
leave his hiding place to ask mamma, ‘‘Don’t you 
think I can fool him this time ?”’ 

Mamma thought so, of course, and Sven’s joy _ 
overflowed in anticipation. But when papa arrived 
at last and stopped in the hallway to scrape the 
dirt off his rubbers, Sven stole up to him silently 
and gently, with no thought of scaring him. And 
there he stood smiling to himself as if he knew 
perfectly well that papa could not see him without 
being pleased. Little by little he came forward, as 
if enjoying papa’s impatience to seize him in his 
arms. Then he clung to papa’s neck and let him- 
self be carried into the house, while the family 
bulldog, which Svante once upon a time had named . 
Poodle, danced about us whining with joy. 

I have such a clear memory of my wife’s eyes as 
they rested on this scene. 


72 BOOK ABOUT LITTLE BROTHER 


“You don’t know how much I talk with him 
about you,” she said, when Sven at last would let 
papa go so that mamma might have her chance. 














Chapter II 


FROM the time Sven was large enough to move 
about at all, he became Poodle’s most intimate 
friend and had the right to do with him whatever 
he wished. He might pull his ears and pinch his 
stump of a tail. He might lie on top of him and 
keep him in the most uncomfortable positions. 
Poodle manifested hardly any displeasure except 
by looking a little puzzled at times, as if unable to 
fathom why such an ordeal must befall him, and 
by removing himself gently and peacefully to some 
new resting place, in the vain hope that his well- 
meaning tormentor would tire and leave him alone. 

But if Sven left the house, Poodle followed him 
wherever he went. Snuffling through his broad, 
cloven muzzle, he would watch how Sven slowly 
and thoughtfully poured sand into a little tin pail 
or resorted to the less suitable amusement of 
splashing in the rainwater barrel. Poodle stayed 
by his side all the time, and if strangers ap- 
proached, Poodle observed their every movement 
with suspicious eyes, prepared for any emergency 
that might require his intervention. 

Otherwise Sven and Poodle had their own pe- 
culiar ways, and more than once they threw the 


_whole house into a panic by disappearing in the . 


most inexplicable manner. Then, when all had 


74 BOOK ABOUT LITTLE BROTHER 


begun to despair of ever seeing them alive again, 
they would suddenly reappear as if nothing had 
happened, both equally astonished at the commo- 
tion they had created. 

It would be wrong to call Sven disobedient, but 
on this particular point he was rather hard to deal 
with. More than once mamma promised him a 
spanking if he ever went away again by himself. 
More than once she avowed to me afterwards that 
she would take the heart’s blood of anybody who 
dared to lay hands on Sven. But Sven remained 
equally unmoved by corrections and pleas, and 
mamma’s extravagant joy at finding him alive 
after one of those excursions seemed merely to fill 
him with a strange wonder that he and she could 
ever have different opinions about anything in the 
world. | 


‘‘There was no danger,” Sven would say. “Why, © 


Poodle was along.”’ ) 

Mamma did not wish to say anything disparag- 
ing about Poodle, but she tried to persuade Sven 
that, after all, Poodle was not quite the same as a 
human being. She said everything she could pos- 
sibly think of. And with his arms about her neck, 
Sven would promise that he would never again 
run away and make mamma unhappy. 

But when he found himself once more alone in 
_ the open air, and it was springtime, and the water 
flowed in little rivers across the front yard, Sven 


Sill oe 








BOOK ABOUT LITTLE BROTHER 75 


forgot everything on earth but that he was a little 
boy who must wander far, far away into the forest. 

Who knows what his thoughts were, or if he 
ever knew that he was entering forbidden paths? 
He walked along prattling to himself, with Poodle 
at his heels, and when he got as far as the gate, 
he found it wide open. Then he must step outside 
in order to have a glance at the world that lay so 
temptingly beyond, and there, by the ditch across 
the road, he saw the glimmer of yellow dandelions 
against the greyish soil, and so he had to toddle 
across as fast as his little legs could carry him. 
Then he was almost in the woods, and resistance 
became no longer possible. The pines rose tall and _ 
rugged above his head, and he had to take a look 
among their trunks where the sunlight shone on 
the moss and the first spring birds had begun their 
singing. A little field mouse came running between 
the stones, and Sven ran after it. Farther and 
farther away he went. He came across a swamp, 
and in the midst of it grew sallows with golden 
catkins on them. These he could not reach without 
stepping into the water and getting his feet wet. . 
But he could always hurl a few stones into the 
swamp and hear them say “ploomp” and watch 
the wide rings that spread in. waves across the sur- 
face of the little pool. This he did, and he kept it 
up for a good long while. His cheeks glowed, and 
his eyes shone with delight. He felt more and 


76 BOOK ABOUT LITTLE BROTHER 


more happy, and he walked all the way to the 
field where stood the royal summer palace, and no 
sooner had he reached the road than he began to 
run. He ran and ran, and passing through a tall 
gateway, he found himself near home again. It 
made him still more happy to know the way and to 
see Poodle snort and wave his stubby tail as a sign 
of wishing to get home. But suddenly he began to 
long for his mother, and at the same time he re- 
membered the yellow flowers he was carrying. 

Slowly and thoughtfully he wandered home- 
ward, and perhaps some vague notion entered his 
mind, that he ought not to have left home at all. 
But there was one thing he didn’t know and never 
‘could make out. That was how long he had been 
away —a couple of hours or a few minutes were 
all one to him. 

Just as he came toddling across the lawn and 
thought of running again in order to reach mam- 
ma, so that he might sit on her lap and be petted 
and kissed, and so that he might tell of all the fun 
he had had, he was shocked by hearing people 
shouting all around him. There were papa and 
mamma, Olof and Svante, the two servant girls, 
and a lot more, it seemed to Sven. They shouted 
all at once, one from this spot and another from 
that. Where they all came from, was more than 
Sven had time to tell. No sooner did he turn in 
one direction, than some one else called to him 





- BOOK ABOUT LITTLE BROTHER 77. 


from behind; and as he tried to turn about in order 
to look in the opposite direction, he was snatched 
from the ground and carried off by somebody who 
came running at top speed. And before he knew 
what was happening to him, he was in the front 
room, and mamma herself had him in her arms 
and was hugging him so that he couldn’t breathe. 

Of course, Sven knew that he never need be 
afraid of his mother, but this time he lost his cour- 
age nevertheless. He recalled what she had said 
about spanking, and at the sight of papa he became 
really concerned, for papa had a grim look and 
said in a very serious tone: “This time, Sven, 
you'll get a spanking, I guess, for that was what I 
heard mamma promise you.”’ 

Then Sven didn’t know what to do, and in his 
distress he bethought himself of the flowers, which 
he offered to mamma. | 

This he need not have done. Mamma had been 
so frightened, and she was so happy now at having 
him back, that she merely hugged him and sur- 
rendered herself to his caresses, laughing and 
crying in quick succession. Finally she took the 
flowers and put them in a little green glass, and 
arranged them to let Sven see how beautiful they 
looked in the sunlight. Then papa abandoned all 
thoughts of punishment and went into his own \ 
room, feeling quite superfluous. _ 

But when mamma was alone with Sven, she took _ 


78 BOOK ABOUT LITTLE BROTHER 


him on her lap and told him, as if it were a fairy 
tale, how troubled she had been and how horribly 
she had felt. She told him that she believed he had 
broken a leg and was lying alone in the woods, so 
that they would not be able to find him until he 
was dead; or that he had fallen into the water and 
would not be found alive, and then neither papa 
nor mamma nor his brothers could ever be happy 
again. Sven listened to it all, but he understood 
only that mamma was nicer to him than any other 
person. Then she let him tell all he had seen and 
done, what fun he had had, and how far away he 
had ventured. She heard about the little mouse 
and the birds and the swamp and the stone-throw- 
ing. And in the end those two understood each 
other perfectly, and were simply happy to have 
found each other again. 

When they had talked it all over, mamma took 
Sven to the what-not. There stood a number of 
precious objects with which Sven was permitted 
to play at times, when he had been very, very good. 
Among other things, there was a white porcelain 
poodle with a tufted tail and a little slipper in his 
mouth. It was very old and didn’t really belong 
to mamma. It had been given to papa by his 
-mother, and it had been hers since she was two 
years old, when she received it as a present from 
her godmother. 

It was the finest thing known to Sven, and now, 











BOOK ABOUT LITTLE BROTHER 79 


out of her heart’s happiness, she took it from the 
what-not and gave it to Sven instead of a spanking. 
Yet he left it in its place. ‘‘Because,”’ said Sven, 
“T might break it, and then papa would be mad.”’ 

But he never forgot that it was his, and some- 
times he would mention the fact when we had com- 
pany. “Mamma gave it to me,” Sven would say, 
‘when I ran away to the woods and came back 
again. It was because mamma felt so happy at 
seeing me again.” | 

And mamma’s defence against any criticism of 
her method of education was to lift up the boy so 
that everybody could have a look at him. Bless 
her heart! She was right. | 


Chapter III 


A YEAR went by, but we didn’t notice its pass- 
ing. Then my wife’s health began to fail seriously, 
and without any discussion both of us knew that 
only one alternative remained. Once before she 
had submitted to the perilous interference of the 
surgeon’s knife, and the symptoms now appearing 
were only too familiar. Therefore, it came as no 
surprise when the doctor one day delivered his 
verdict, making certain what we had already 
guessed, namely, that nothing but an immediate 
operation could DrESSIVe Elsa for me and the 
children. 

That day we went about our home as if a death 
sentence had been pronounced upon our whole life, 
and I could see that Elsa was bidding everything 
good-bye. For the first time I perceived how much 
of her innermost thoughts she had kept. hidden 
from me, as from everybody else; how familiar - 
she was with the thought of death, and how the 
certainty of an early death was gnawing at her 
innermost being. She had grown pale, and her 
cheeks were hollow. Her hands were yellow as 
wax, and she went about in agony. 

Then she asked me for the first time to be per- 
mitted to die. For the first time she told me every- 
thing that she had kept hidden within herself — 








BOOK ABOUT LITTLE BROTHER 81 


everything that I had pressed her to tell, and that 
had never been allowed to pass her lips except in 
the form of vague hints. 

‘Since I was very young,” she said, “since long 
before you and I learned to know each other, the 
thought has been natural to me, that I should not 
be permitted to live long. Then I found you, and 
all the rest was forgotten, because you made me 
happy, George, so much happier than I could ever 
make you. You gave me three children— my two 
big boys and Sven. And what can I do for you, 
for them, for all of you? I am ill, you know, and 
I shall never be well. But you must not forget me, 
George. Oh, yes, I know you will mourn for me, 
because you love me, although I have always been 
weak and ailing and of no use to anybody. But 
still you must not forget me. And you will find 
some one else to help you with the children.” 

Once more she begged me to be permitted to die, 
to be permitted to live in peace during the few 
weeks that remained. The only thing to which she 
objected was death on the operating table, but she 
was satisfied to pass away, and she wished only to 
live long enough in spite of her suffering to prepare 
the children for what must come, and to bid them 
farewell. 

All this came upon me so suddenly that I could 
not think clearly, and much less find words for an 
answer. I had a vague feeling that any interfer- 


82 BOOK ABOUT LITTLE BROTHER 


ence on my part meant participation in a battle 
going far beyond and above what human beings 
generally are doomed to experience. I felt the 
shyness I have always observed whenever it be- 
came a question of touching anything that had 
been another person’s innermost and most inac- 
cessible possession. And if there be anything that 
cannot be decided by any one else, it is whether a 
person should submit to a certain death or take up 
a hard struggle for an uncertain recovery of life. 
As I looked at my wife, she seemed at once so 
close to me and yet so distant. Her plea for per- 
mission to die was so touching and so seriously 
meant, that I lacked courage to ask her to return 
to life for my sake. And I noticed with surprise 
that she was capable of leaving everything she 
loved because she was prepared for it. At the 
same time I felt with all the force of despair, that 
I couldn’t bear losing her. I could not. And reach- 
ing out in desperation for the only thing that came 
into my mind, I merely said, ‘‘“And Sven? Can you 
leave Sven?” 

She quailed as if before a fatal blow, and wrung 
her hands in agony. ‘‘No, no, I cannot!” 

Staggering toward our bedroom door, she asked 
to be left alone. I saw the door close behind her; 
I sat still as she had left me, and it seemed to me 
that my whole life with her was past and dead, 
and that now she must go away from us. I under- 





a Ee a 











BOOK ABOUT LITTLE BROTHER — 83 


stood that if she didn’t, it would not be for my 
sake, but for the sake of the little one with the 
golden hair and the marvelous eyes—her angel 
child that had come to tie her more strongly to 
life. I understood all this, but it did not hurt me. 
I found it quite natural that I alone could not hold 
her back. I bowed my head and wept, wept for 
the first time over myself and. my own life. I 
looked forward to nothing, hoped for nothing, but 
to see the days advance quietly and mercilessly 
toward the hour that must strike some time, and 
at last to see death tear asunder everything for 
which I had lived. 

I don’t know how long I sat in this state. All I 
know is that twilight descended upon me, and that 
I was startled by discovering my wife on her knees 
before me, with her head laid against my arm. 
She had entered so silently that I had not heard 
her, and her voice sounded calm when she spoke, 
“T will live for you, George, and for Sven, and 
for our big boys.” 

I knew that voice of hers when it took on a 
depth and warmth as if everything but her love 
had been silenced within her. I understood that 
her decision now was- inflexible, that once more 
she belonged to all of us, or wished to do so, and 
a hot wave of gratitude toward her and toward 
life passed through me. A long while went by 
before we altered our position, but when we did 


84 BOOK ABOUT LITTLE BROTHER 


so, she rose and lighted all the lamps as for a 


party. 


Then she called the children, and they came 
silent and wondering, and there was no need for 
explanations. They had understood, each one in 
his own way. They had talked among themselves, 
just as we grown-ups had done, and they knew that 
their mother’s life was at stake, but that she risked 
it in order that she might live with them. 

Sven climbed into mamma’s lap and huddled 
close to her. And he made us all laugh through our 
tears by saying, ‘‘Mamma must not die and leave 
her little Chubs alone.” | 

It was one of his pet names within the family, 
and he used it without the least idea that it might 
sound funny. For this reason his words calmed us 
with something like a promise of life. 

But when the children had gone to bed, Elsa 
and I walked through the room with our arms 
about each other. I saw that once more she was 
saying good-bye, but in a manner different from 
that of a few hours ago. The next day she was to 
go to the hospital. 

Next morning, when I came out of our room, I 
found Olof seated in the big armchair opposite the 
bedroom door. 

“Have you sat here long?”’ I asked in surprise. 

“Yes,” the boy answered laconically. 

He had sat there thinking of his mother, and 














nating Malet ad 


BOOK ABOUT LITTLE BROTHER 85. 


of how solemn everything had become of a sudden. 
For the first time it struck me how big he was, and 
I took his hand as if he were of my own age. His 
ten-year-old face twitched, but he was incapable 
of uttering a word. 

When Elsa and I were wee in the cab, he had 
gained control over himself. He climbed on the 
footstep at my wife’s side, patted her cheek, and 
said protectingly as to a child, ‘‘Don’t be afraid, 
mamma. Everything will be all right.” 

Svante showed himself, too, and little Sven was 
lifted up, babbling and prattling. At that moment 
Elsa did not know which one of all she loved most. 
But during the drive our talk returned constantly . 
to our big boy who, for the first time, had talked — 
and felt like a man. 


Chapter IV 
Fis angel of death passed by our home that 


time, but his wings had brushed so close to us that 
what then happened long stamped our entire life. 
In fact, it never ceased to do so. Nevertheless, 
happiness returned once more to our home, but it 
was subdued and more sombre. Once more she 
who alone could give a holiday mood to our worka- 
day life came back to us. Our boys bade us wel- 
come on our return, and Sven crawled into his 
mother’s lap, snuggled close to her, and looked so 
blessedly happy and roguish. 

‘Do you see now that you couldn’t die and 
leave your little Chubs ?” he said. 

He looked triumphant as if he considered the 
happy outcome attributable to himself, and largely 
in order to cheer us all up, I said, ‘“You seem to 
think that it’s you who have made mamma well.”’ 

‘And so it is,” retorted my wife. 

And once more I noticed on her face the ex- 
pression that formerly had impressed me so 
strangely, but which more and more I became 
capable of understanding. 

She clasped the little one in her arms, and two 
bright tears dropped from her eyes. Then she 
gave her hand to me and said, “I am so glad to be 
home again.” 








BOOK ABOUT LITTLE-BROTHER 87 


I could make no answer. I merely looked at the 
group before me, and I knew that here was the 
happiness for which I hardly dared to hope a few 
weeks earlier. And yet I felt in my heart a pang 
that seemed a first intimation of hopeless lone- 
liness. 





Chapter FV 


[ RECALL the spring that followed as a sea of 
flowers overflowing every empty spot in our home. 
Gradually the hyacinths were mixed with blue 
anemones, these in their turn with white anemones, 
with primroses and violets; and finally, as mid- 
summer approached and the awnings flapped in 
the summer breeze, the lilacs appeared. 

The flowers were brought in by mamma and 
Sven, and it would be hard to tell which of the 
two loved the flowers most. I can still see them 
side by side, with their hands full of flowers, red- 
cheeked and talkative, as they walked across the 
big front yard toward the open veranda. Her 
hair was as dark as his was fair, but both had the 
same deep blue eyes. They formed a most singular 
contrast, and yet they bore a closer resemblance to 
each other than mother and child generally do. 
They. belonged together as if created to wander 
side by side, always with flowers in their hands, to 
the very end of life, and always gazing into each 
other’s eyes. No one could behold them without 
a sunny smile brightening his face. This I noticed 
often, and felt myself the richer on account of it. 

Life, indeed, seemed rich and full to me during 
this time as never before. I forgot once more 
what had filled my soul with heavy forebodings, 











BOOK ABOUT LITTLE BROTHER 8p 


and I found full satisfaction in the present. It 
seemed as if we had had to pass through every- 
thing that was burdensome and sad merely that 
we might enjoy a more complete happiness after- 
wards. I was grateful for every new day that 
passed, I was glad to be able to forget. And it 
seemed to me that we were borne onward to a 
good fortune greater than that generally reached 
by men. 

I believe that my wife, for a time at least, shared 
this feeling. It was from her that our constant 
stream of happiness flowed. She had returned to 
life indeed. She felt well. She lived beneath tall 
old trees in the midst of an abundance of flowers. 
She had us about her, and nothing disturbed our 
peace. 

One evening she was walking with me along the 
path we liked most of all because there we were 
sure of meeting nobody. All around us blossoming 
lilacs filled the air with their fragrance. Against 
the bright June sky the half-moon appeared almost 
lightless, as if bathed in the blue that formed a 
wide-spreading arch to the horizon where it met 
the plains. Pale stars seemed trying to sparkle in 
that blue without being able to break the luminous 
brightness of the night. 

As I think of this time and all that followed, I 
am astounded at our powers of recuperation. 
Every evening we were happy as if nothing but a 


90 BOOK ABOUT LITTLE BROTHER 


slight cloud had appeared on our sky and passed 
away again, and there was not a sign of melancholy 
in our talk. All that had been lay buried behind us. 
Of course, it was not a careless happiness based 
on the blind and untried self-confidence of youth. 
It was far more than that. It was the calm and 
tacit harmony that comes to people who have suf- 
fered and conquered together: a happiness that 
nothing can spoil or destroy because it springs — 
indissolubly from the innermost recesses of two 
human souls. We knew during this time that we 
desired nothing, asked nothing, but what we al- 
ready had. It is during such periods of life that 
one of the twain may seek solitude to wipe away 
his tears, for shame of showing how happy he is. 
No strange thoughts, playing truant on their own 
account, no imaginings, no desires, have the power 
to disturb this profound sentiment out of which 
grows the power to live. All that was ever sung 
by saga or legend lives then its full, never-dwind- 
ling life beyond what any poem can express, and 
I believe that such experiences alone can sanctify 
the common life of man and woman. 

Such, at least, were our feelings during these 
mild spring nights that always ended at the same 
place, the bedside of our sleeping children. We 
spoke very little about our emotions. One night, 
however, my wife asked, ‘‘How long have we been 
married ?” 


BOOK ABOUT LITTLE BROTHER 91 


“Why do you ask— you who can never forget 
a date?” i 

“Can it really be more than ten years? Can it 
be true that we are as old as that?” 

“Does it make you sad?” I rejoined with a 
smile. 

She came closer to me and took my arm. “There 
was a time when I was afraid of growing old,” 
she said. “And so I still am. But I don’t under- 
stand people’s talk when they say that you love 
most and are most happy in youth. That must be 
the talk of people who don’t know how to love.” 

I tried to argue, but she interrupted me to speak 
of others. She mentioned friends whom we liked 
and acquaintances with whom we associated. She 
- denied that they could be happy. She related traits 
of their lives, things they had done and things they 
had said. She dwelt at still greater length on what 
they had failed to do or say. And she said in con- 
clusion: “I believe the people of our time have for- 
gotten how to love. They are occupied with so 
many other things.” 

All that my wife said on this occasion surprised 
me. Though a woman, she rarely referred to 
others when alone with me, and now I tried to de- 
fend humanity. I even made her admit a couple of 
exceptions. 

But she answered me as if she were not really 
listening; and when I stopped, she went right on 


“ 2 
«tem att 


92 BOOK ABOUT LITTLE BROTHER 
pursuing her own line of thought, ‘‘Why are you 
and I more happy than all other people?’ She 
spoke earnestly as.if merely stating a well known 
and recognized fact, and she added, “It seems to 
me that all the rest are unhappy in comparison 
with you and me.” 

I smiled at her intensity, but her words warmed 
my heart. “Why make any comparisons ?”’ J asked. 
“Because they make me happy,”’ she replied. 

Stepping right in front of me and looking into 
my face, she continued: “I want to say this now 
because otherwise it may never be said. It seems 
so queer when I think of the earliest period of our 
marriage. Then I thought that I loved you and 
was very happy. It was because I knew nothing 
and understood nothing. Now I know what it is, 
and now I want to thank you.” 

Before I could prevent her, she had seized my 
left hand and kissed it. When I tried to pull it 
away, she clung.to it and kissed it again at the 
base of the finger bearing my wedding ring. 

As she spoke those words, there was a power 
in her emotion, about her whole person, that con- 
fused me. Silently I took her in my arms and 
kissed her with a sense of kissing my bride for the 
first time. And like her, I knew that the earth held 
no greater bliss, 


Chapter VI 


SVEN found a playmate, and this was auite an 
event in his little life. Until then he had played 
only with his big brothers. This playmate was a 
few months younger than Sven, and a girl to boot. 
All this was very novel and exciting, so that Sven 
had a great deal to talk about with mamma during 
this time. 

Little Martha had moved to the country with 
her parents, and at first she and Sven had eyed 
each other from a distance. Martha was an inde- 
scribably sweet little girl, with healthy red cheeks, 
clear blue eyes and long curly hair that somewhat 
resembled Sven’s. Ere long she came one day and 
seated herself not far from Sven, curious to see 
what he was doing. 

Sven was accustomed to play by himself, and 
there was one game that amused him very much 
and that was quite easy to learn. All he did was 
to go out into the front yard and sit down on the 
lawn. There he watched with great interest what- 
ever happened in his immediate vicinity. Ants 
climbed the blades of grass. A butterfly visited a 
flower and then fluttered away on white wings 
into the sunlight. A beetle lay on its back and had 
to be turned right side up before it could proceed 
on its journey. A couple of birds hopped about 


94 BOOK ABOUT LITTLE BROTHER 
between the tussocks without letting the child dis- 
turb their search of food for themselves and their 
young. Sometimes he did nothing but pluck blades 
of grass and rub them between his fingers with a 
mien of thoughtful investigation. When his hand 
was full, he threw them all away and picked new 
ones. Sven himself had called this game “‘to sit 
green grass,’ and he had much to say about it 
when he interrupted the game and ran to mamma 
with a tale of all the observations he had made. 
Little Martha sat watching this game, and at last 
she asked him what he was doing. 

‘Don’t you know I’m sitting green grass?” 
asked Sven. And his eyes grew big with astonish- 
ment. 

No, Martha did not know at all. But as Sven 
was able to keep it up so long, she assumed that 
it must be remarkably amusing, and so she sat 
down beside him. The two children picked grass 
and poked the ants and became so well acquainted 
that they left the spot hand in hand, feeling that 
they could never part again. 

A couple of days later Sven sat in mamma’s 
room talking about Martha. He had ceased to 
talk about grass and flowers and birds and butter- 
flies. All he talked about now was what Martha 
had said, and what Martha had done, and how 
much fun they had together. 


BOOK ABOUT LITTLE BROTHER 95 


One day mamma said to him, “You wk Martha 
very much, don’t you?” 

Sven thrust out his lips and answered, ‘‘Don’t 
you know we are engaged ?” 

Mamma answered very seriously, “You never 
told me.”’ ; 

‘You ought to know, anyhow,” Sven remarked. 
‘We are going to get married.” 

‘When?’ asked mamma. 

‘“When we grow up, of course,” Sven replied. 

Sven was very happy to be engaged to a girl 
whom he was going to marry, and one could see 
no prettier spectacle than the two children coming 
hand in hand across the front yard, with the sun- 
light playing on their curly hair, or Sven pulling 
Martha in a little cart and turning around all the 
time to look at her.- 

Sometimes they quarreled. Then Sven became 
gloomy and went in to mamma and said that 
Martha was horrid. 

Then mamma rejoined, ‘Yes, but as you are to 
' marry her, I suppose you must make up and be 
friends again.”’ 

‘T don’t want to marry her,”’ said Sven. 

Nevertheless, having kissed and made up, they 
soon were friends again, and after that they had 
more fun than ever before. 

It was a foregone conclusion that mamma 
should worship Sven’s best girl as much as he did 


96 BOOK ABOUT LITTLE BROTHER 


himself; and so, when she came to take Sven with 
her, and he found himself unable to desert Martha 
(quite a new experience in his little life), the 
dilemma was solved by mamma’s going off with a 
lover at either hand. Thus she became at once 
their playmate and confidante. I fear that she even 
discussed both love and marriage with them, be- 
cause she knew their language as no one else, and 
it is not impossible that by force of imagination 
she felt as if she already were a mother-in-law. 

It was of no use that any one tried to take Sven’s 
love humorously. Olof, of course, made fun of 
Little Brother and tried to explain that a real man 
does not care for girls. Even Svante, whose con- 
science was not quite clear in this respect, tried to 
get at Little Brother by saying he was too small. 

In his distress Sven turnéd to mamma as the 
supreme authority. And mamma told him not to_ 
mind what the big boys said. If he liked Martha, 
that was nothing to make fun of, whether he be ~ 
small or big. : 

Therewith Sven regarded his brothers as com- 
pletely crushed, and after that he refused to let 
them spoil his happiness. He himself took his hap- 
piness so seriously that he did not understand how 
any one could take it in jest, and for that reason 
he made no secret of his affairs. If, as might 
happen, some grown-up person asked him whether 
it was true that he was engaged, he said yes with- 


BOOK ABOUT LITTLE BROTHER 97 


out more ado, and the next moment he could be 
seen playing with Martha as if he wished the 
whole world to notice that she was pretty and 
sweet as a fiancée should be. 

Taking it all in all, Sven’s manner was such that 
everybody ceased to poke fun at him, and even | 
his brothers had to leave him alone. 

One day, however, Olof got the bright idea of 
telling him that he had hair like a girl. Sven had 
never heard such a thing before, nor would he have 
cared before. 

But now Big Brother added, “That won’t do 
for you, because you are engaged.” 

This hit Sven very hard. From that day he 
never ceased to nag mamma about his hair. “I 
want my hair like the other boys,” he said. 

It did not help mamma to object or to ask Sven 
not to mind what the big boys said. It did not 
even help her to beg Sven to keep his pretty locks 
for the sake of mamma, who loved them so much. 
Sven maintained that they must go. 

“T don’t want to look like a girl,” he said. 

Mamma felt sad at the mere thought of having 
any one touch those beautiful locks. “I cannot 
imagine Chubs without his locks,”’ she said. 

She took him in her arms, whispered to him, 

babbled, argued and begged on behalf of the cher- 
* lished locks. But Sven was not to be persuaded. 
He begged so prettily and looked at her so per- 


98 BOOK ABOUT LITTLE BROTHER 


suasively, that at last he was allowed to have his 
way. 

He came running in his little red hat, with the 
white dress flapping about his little legs. “I am 
going to town to have my hair cut,” he shouted. 

He was full of eagerness and excitement. On 
the train he talked like a streak and even turned 
to an old gentleman whom he had never seen 
before, in order to tell him that he was going to 
town to have his long hair cut off. 

The old gentleman looked up from his news- 
‘ paper, cast a preoccupied and indifferent glance at 
the boy, and resumed his reading. 

Sven believed the other one had not heard, and 
so he reiterated in order to make the matter clear. 
“I am going to have my hair cut so I won’t look 
like a girl.” 

But the old gentleman intrenched himself behind 
his paper and muttered something that caused 
mamma to silence Chubs. 

After that Sven sat quiet and silent all the way 
as if brooding over something. He looked so mis- 
erable that his mother took him on her lap and 
patted him, feeling quite furious at the old gentle- 
man who could not understand that Sven felt sorry 
every strange gentleman would not take part in a 
little boy’s happiness. 

Sven remained silent until he left the station. . 
Then he whispered to his mother as if afraid of 


BOOK ABOUT LITTLE BROTHER 99 


being overheard, “I don’t think he was a nice old 
man.” 

‘But, Sven,” said mamma, ‘you didn’t know 
him at all.” 

‘“That’s no reason for him not to be nice,” 
retorted Sven. 

‘But little boys shouldn’t talk to strange peo- 
ple,’ mamma persisted. 

‘T thought it would make him glad to hear that 
I shouldn’t have to look like a girl any longer.”’ 

Poor little child), mamma thought, and once 
more her heart grew angry against all the 
‘grouchy’ people who spoil the happiness of the 
little ones. Poor little child! How will you fare 
in the world? 

And in order to console Sven and make him 
happy again, she said, ‘“That was a horrid, wicked 
old man. Yes, real wicked he was.” 

At that Sven brightened up again, and his sor- 
row was gone because he could believe that only 
wicked people acted like that. He had-his hair 
cut, and then he was taken to a tea room where he 
had pastry and felt very happy because he thought 
everybody was aware that he had his hair cut like 
a boy for the first time. Then he journeyed home- 
ward with mamma. The moment he reached the 
front yard, he dropped mamma’s hand and ran as 
fast as his legs could carry him to surprise papa. 

He stopped by the writing desk and took off 


100 BOOK ABOUT LITTLE BROTHER 


his hat, quite forgetting that papa was not to be 
disturbed at his work. He stood still, hat in hand, 
his whole body twitching with excitement at what 
papa might say. His eyes grew bigger and bigger 
until it seemed as if the whole boy was nothing 
but eyes. 
Papa looked and looked with a sense that some- 
_thing quite remarkable must have happened. At 
last he saw light, and then he had to hoist Chubs 
to the ceiling. 
“Now Sven looks like a real boy,” papa said. 
Having received this certificate of manliness, 
Sven ran away to show himself to his big brothers 
and to receive the admiration of Martha. 


Chapter VII 


THE rest of that summer, begun in such smiling © 


surroundings, was to be spent on the west coast. 
The reason was that a longing stronger than words 
could express tugged at my heart. 

I cannot explain how this unreasonable longing 
got into my blood. Perhaps the cause was that, 
as a child, I once spent a summer on the west coast. 
It is fairly well proved what a part such early, 
often accidental, but strong, childhood impressions 
play in forming the background of feelings that 
are later to determine our lives. 

It seems peculiar to myself that the memories 
of those weeks could have kept alive more than 
thirty years. I was only six years old at the time, 
and commonly all memories of that age fade away 
except those imparted by a home where one has 
spent many years. Yet I have visioned the sea for 
many years as I saw it then. I have seen it throw- 


ing up enormous waves that were additionally en- 


larged by the child’s fancy. I have seen seaweed 
and jellyfish and starfish and all that rich life found 
on the bottom of shallow bays and at the foot of 
grey rocks. I have seen treeless rocks rise out of 


the sea that broke at their feet. My memory has - 


projected queer reminiscences of a tremendous 


w 


102 BOOK‘ABOUT LITTLE BROTHER 

~. storm.that fiung loads of sand at my sensitive child 

- face. 

It is strange how long you can keep such a recol- 
_ lection, and stranger still what a singular power it 
can get over your soul. Such a memory is full of 
a tugging desire like that of the young girl’s dream 
about a knight that some day is to bend over her 
mouth with whispers of a limitless happiness. It 
has much in common with what the youth feels 
when his pulsing blood sings its promises of future 
victories. But probably it has most in common 
with the calm expectation of the future that dwells 
in a man whose youth has never died. It lay at 
the bottom of my soul like nostalgia, but decades 
passed before I could listen to its promptings. 

When at last, after many years, I reached so 
far that I knew it to be possible to enjoy a summer 
by the sea, it was my wife who made me fear that 
all my joy might vanish like smoke. She had never 
seen the west coast, and I knew that she regarded 
the entire trip with a sort of repulsion, comsenting 
only because she understood that I should be hurt 
by the slightest resistance. I knew this because she 
once said, “I cannot imagine a summer where you 
see no trees.” 

I understood perfectly that, in speaking those 
words, she revealed a dislike for the trip so deeply 
rooted that she feared herself incapable of over- 
coming it. Having seen, however, that I noticed 


s 


BOOK ABOUT LITTLE BROTHER 103 


her repulsion, she did everything to make me for- 
get her remark. Still it remained with me, and I 
began to feel depressed at the thought of my cher- 
ished trip to the sea. 

To me this matter was neither insignificant nor 
foolish, as it may seem to others. True enjoyment 
is impossible when mingled with discord, and | 
could think of no worse discord than my wife’s 
failure to share my enjoyment. I had grown ac- 
customed never to feel alone, in joy or sorrow, 
and it broke my heart to find myself alone in my 
desire. 

I wanted my dream of this summer to become 
reality, and I fought for it with the same eager- 
ness as when I believed myself about to lose my 
wife’s love and fought to recover it. Day and 
night I pondered a method to ward off the danger 
that seemed to menace my summer’s pleasure, and 
finally I thought I had found it. One day I pro- 
posed to my wife that we make the tour to the west 
coast by water, skirting the coast of Sweden the 
whole way. This I did to conquer her. I felt that 
a silent battle was being fought between us, and I 
did not wish to be vanquished. I wanted to compel 
my wife to love the sea, and the means I had in- 
vented to gain this purpose seemed to me the best 
ever conceived by man. My line of reasoning was 
this: 

“Our start will take us through the Stockholm 


104 BOOK ABOUT LITTLE BROTHER 


archipelago. Then we continue down the beautiful 
eastern coast. Gradually, almost imperceptibly, 
she will see the smiling nature of the east coast 
change into the bareness of the western shore, and 
unconsciously she will be gripped by a grandeur 
surpassing everything else in nature.”’ 

_ I dare not say, however, that the journey itself 
comprised any incident warranting a belief that 
my skillfully conceived plan had proved effective. 
As usual, my wife enjoyed an interesting trip by 
boat, but I could not discover that our voyage 
served to turn her thoughts in any particular direc- 
tion. It was to her merely a long steamship jour- 
ney, than which she knew nothing better, but that 
was all. 

I was tense with expectation all the time, but 
my courage began to wane when we passed Gothen- 
- burg and I saw the sea froth and fume about my 
longed-for west-coast boulders. 

A brisk storm was blowing, and I did not wel- 
come it just then, not so much because it increased 
the difficulties of our journey, the last part of 
which had to be made in an open boat, as because 
a storm on the western coast is little apt to remove 
an already existing dislike of the region bordering 
the open sea. I sat in the fishing-boat watching my 
wife all the time with a sidelong glance as the boat 
rose on the crest-of a wave and the water raced 
from bow to stern. I discovered nothing that could 


~~ 


BOOK ABOUT LITTLE BROTHER 105 


answer my dumb inquiry. She appeared quite inac- 
cessible as she sat gazing across the black waters, 
while hundreds of conflicting voices rose within 
me, all of them, as it seemed, joining in a tremen- 
dous effort to win her heart and sympathy. 

As I sat thus, however, my uneasiness began to 
yield. Untroubled by any misgiving or self-induced 
nervousness, I perceived the nature of the western 
coast for the first time. It filled me with an emo- 
tion that I would call sacred, and everything else 
vanished before it. 

The boat rolled along over the troubled waters. 
Ahead of us appeared more and more clearly the 
contours of an extensive island sketched against a 
background of swiftly passing clouds. The nearer 
we approached this island, the more hotly burned 
within me the yearning of decades, now about to 
be satisfied. We landed at the pier, and I took in 
everything about me with a greedy glance. I saw 
the wharves, the warehouses, all the little brightly 
colored buildings crowded together on the slope 
of bare rock. Boats were bobbing side by side in 
the harbor, while large quantities of fish lay scat- 
tered along the rocks to be dried in the sun. A 
group of men in yellow oilskin coats, sou’westers 
and hip boots were visible on a projecting point of 
land, slowly and pensively at work on a lot of big 
fish, the like of which I had never, to my sch 
edge, seen before. 


106 BOOK ABOUT LITTLE BROTHER 


The pungent air stung my face and cheeks. 
Around me I heard a thunder as of roaring water- 
falls lashed onward by raging winds. I saw the 
outlines of the rocks turn blue and black in the 
distance, while the storm sent the clouds scurrying 
wildly across a sky that shone blue through the 
rifts. But when I reached our little white house, 
standing at the extreme point of a cape to west- 
ward, far from the cluster of human habitations, 
I beheld the sea for the first time. 

I stood a long time gazing at this sea that I had 
reached at last. When I entered our house, I no- 
ticed that the window of my own room gave on 
the very view I had just left, the only difference 
being that the sea seemed to have come still closer. 
Once more I stopped still, unaware of what was 
going on within myself. But at that moment I 
caught sight of my wife. She stood alone by the 
window, looking out. Suddenly it occurred to me 
that everything that had occupied my thoughts for 
weeks: all agitation, all misgivings, all stratagems, 
all calculations, the whole struggle to make my 
wife share my own feelings—all had been for- 
gotten since I put foot on this rocky island. There 
she stood now, and I had no idea whether at that 
moment our thoughts were preparing to clash or 
to fuse. 

Then she turned about, and I saw that her eyes 
were full of tears. She held out her hand to me, I 


BOOK ABOUT LITFLE BROTHER 107 


took it, and we stood beside each other gazing at 
the water. The waves flung themselves far up the 
rocks beneath our windows. As far as the eye 
could reach, nothing was to be seen but the white 
crests of waves rising from the black surface of the 
sea, and little reefs against which the sea was 
breaking. The waves rose skyward like pillars of 
white foam, forced ahead by the weight of the 
whole sea coming in from the west. It was an 
’ uproar full of dispassionate power, a tremendous 
outburst suggestive of the riotous exultation of life 
itself. 

Face to face with this uproar, my own disquiet 
was laid at rest, while my wife’s hand in my own 
made me feel that both of us had been headed for 
the sea and had reached it by different routes. We 
did not speak, but stood there a long time, and our 
inward conflicts died away. We fell asleep with 
our ears full of the thunder of storm and waves, 
and when the thundering ceased, we woke, dis- 
turbed by the silence. 

Beneath our window the sea lay calm and spa- 
cious, stirred only by the measured ground-swell. 


Chapter VIII 


Y EARS have passed since I first recorded this 
memory. Then I did not know that later I should 
have to fight another, greater battle with my wife 
—a battle that would leave me alone and yet not 
lonely, bowed, but not hopeless. 

Now I have a vision of us two sitting on the 
highest rock outside our friendly white house. In 
a glamour always new, different every night, the 
sun descends into the sea, and between us Sven is 
sitting. He is barelegged and brown, and because 
it grows cooler toward nightfall, he puts his little 
feet under mamma’s dress. He is begging for per- 
mission to stay up as long as the sunlight remains. 
His eyes dwell in wonder on the last flaming re- 
fulgence of the sun that is just vanishing into the 
calmly heaving sea. He sits with his chin propped 
against his hand as if steeped in serious thought, 
for which he can find no words. And when, finally, 
he must go to bed, he clings about my neck and 
asks me to carry him. 

With this easy burden on my arm, I descend 
slowly from the rocks, and turning back, I perceive 
the dark silhouette of my wife against the sky. 
She sits as Sven was sitting a while ago, and her 
eyes seek the spot where the sun disappeared and 
the flames of the sunset were extinguished. 


Chapter IX 
NEVER had Sven been so admired, patted, 


petted, and idolized as he was this summer. The 
pilots carried him over the hills and carved boats 
for him. The old women stopped and smiled sun- 
nily at the mere sight of him. The young wives 
forgot their own babies and said that such a child 
they had never seen. The girls guided him along 
the rocks and played with him unbidden. Sven 
lived in constant sunshine, and in that air he grew 
stronger and more sunburnt than he had ever been 
before. 

In a word, he was the centre of our thoughts 
and the sun of this, our only summer on the western 
coast. . 
Strangely enough, however, this was the very 
time when he discovered a new topic of conversa- 
tion to which he returned incessantly. It was 
peculiar to Sven that he spoke of anything that — 
came into his mind. This he did with less self- 
consciousness than children commonly show, 
wholly careless as to the impression he might make 
on any grown-up person. Otherwise the rule is that 
children hide to some extent what they think, and 
speak with a certain reserve in the presence of 
older people. The reason is that they fear to see 
the smile of irony directed at their ideas, even 


- 


110 BOOK ABOUT LITTLE BROTHER 


- when there is kindliness in the smile. This is par- 
ticularly the case if a child is more sensitive, more — 
naive, more frank of mind than other children, or 
if its nature differs entirely from that of the rest. 

From the time he opened his eyes, Sven had 
never met anything but sympathetic understanding. 
Arrived at the age which makes it possible for 
parents to occupy themselves with their children, 
he was almost constantly watched by a pair of eyes 
that rejoiced in his every movement, that grasped 
and responded to his every word, that reflected 
every expression of his tender and innocent soul 
more faithfully than he could possibly do it him- 
self. It was through his love that little Sven 
learned to know the world about him. And be- 
cause it suited his own affectionately devoted 
nature, as it suited the person who, day by day, 
gave him far more than when she merely gave him 
life, it seemed to Sven the most natural thing that 
whatever grew or wondered or laughed within 
him should be voiced as directly and simply as it 
was conceived, 

Perhaps, although he could never express it, 
there existed also within him a sort of premonition 
that he didn’t belong here. Perhaps this premoni- 
tion served unconsciously to tie him still more 
firmly to her who had lived so long with the same 
feeling buried beneath her joy in life. Who can 
answer such questions? Who would dare to at- 


- BOOK ABOUT LITTLE BROTHER 111 


tempt an answer? Nothing but silence dwells 
above the flowers that grow on a grave. 

Certain it is, however, that little Sven once dis- 
covered a picture on the wall of his mother’s room. 
Having watched it for a while he took it from its 
place and stared at it in silence as if beholding 
something quite new, out of which his mind could 
make nothing. | 

The picture, was not in accord with modern 
taste. It had little art, and it told a tale. ‘“The 
Procession of Death” was the name of the tale. 
Death was to be seen stalking across the wide 
plain. He was dressed in a white cloak that hid 
the skeleton but left the skull exposed. He was 
followed by a long train of young and old without 
distinction. This train was so long that it seemed - 
lost in infinity, and no one could detect its end. 
Death held a bell in his hand, and you could see 
that it had just been rung. You could see it because 
a woman broken with age was sitting by the way- 
side, her hands raised appealingly to the inexorable 
one, who was passing her without a glance. A 
little way from Death stood a couple of young 
lovers. The bell of death had just rung in the 
young man’s ear, and the desperate arms of love 
could no longer hold him back. The procession 
of death must move on, and as the place waiting 
_for him appeared, the young man must take it, 
and his place on earth would be empty, and no 


112 BOOK ABOUT LITTLE BROTHER - 


longing would have the power to call him back. 
But where the end of the train was lost to sight, a 
light appeared like that of dawn. 

Such was the picture. Mamma had brought it 

to the island with other pictures and photographs 
to be used in the decoration of our new home. It 
was at this picture Sven was gazing when he asked 
mamma, ‘‘What is that?” 
/ Mamma told the tale of cruel death that takes 
| the young and leaves the old who are begging to 
| follow him. And Sven put the picture back in its 
place. 

The next morning he took it down again, and 
having looked at it a while, he made mamma tell 
the whole story over again. 

Once more Sven listened while his big eyes 
grew serious and puzzled. “Say, mamma,’ he 
asked, ‘“‘do you think the young man is very sorry 
because he has to die?” 

Yes,” mamma answered, “but the young 
woman is still more sorry.”’ 

‘But perhaps he will be an angel,” said Sven, 
‘‘with white wings on his shoulders.” 

“He surely will,” said mamma . 

Sven sighed and did not feel contented. ‘‘Why 
shouldn’t the old woman go along,” he said, oe 
she wants to so badly?” 

“No one knows,” said mamma. “Only God 
knows.” 


BOOK ABOUT LITTLE BROTHER © 113 


‘Does he really know?” 

“Yes, he does.” : 

Sven returned to the sunshine and the rocks, but 
after that he loved this tale more than any other. 
Almost every morning, when mamma was combing 
her hair, Sven came into her room, took down the 
wonderful picture and made her tell the tale. 

Something else had happened to Sven, however, 
and that was during the previous winter. He had 
been taken to the theatre to see a play that was 
given Sunday morning, when Sven was allowed to 
omit his customary forenoon nap. The play was 
Strindberg’s ‘‘Lucky-Pehr.”’ Sven did not under- 
stand much of the play, but he enjoyed it in his 
own way, so much so that he communicated his 
pleasure to those who sat about him. 

Then came the scene where death appears to 
Lucky-Pehr, and Sven grew silent. No one had 
remembered the occurrence of this scene, or 
thought that it could make such an impression. 
But Sven didn’t care for anything else after that. 
And when anybody asked what he had seen at the 
theatre, his sole answer was: “‘I saw death. It was 
a great big skeleton that could talk. And it carried 
a scythe.” 

Now Sven combined this recollection with the 
picture of the procession of death. The only thing 
he couldn’t make out was why death had a scythe 
on the stage but was ringing a bell in the picture. 


‘114 BOOK ABOUT LITTLE BROTHER 


Otherwise it seemed as if the memory of the the- 
atre, the image of the picture, and the tale told by 
mamma became united in the child’s mind. 

Sven talked of it all the time. The picture had 
taken hold of his fancy with an intensity that noth- 
ing could abate. And to anybody willing to listen 
he would tell about death who met Lucky-Pehr 
and threatened to take him along, but had to give 
up because Lucky-Pehr pleaded so beautifully with 
him. He told it so that he himself shivered at the 
very thought, and if death had appeared to him in 
person, it could not have impressed him more 
forcibly. 

But his friends on the island considered it very 
strangé that a little child lie him could talk of 
such things. They never made fun of him, but 
what he told served merely to strengthen their 
sense of something fine and frail which they liked 
to take in their arms and carry across the rocks. 

Nor did Sven let his happiness be disturbed by 
such tales. He was familiar with them, and they 
seemed to accompany him as the shadow accom- 
panies the bright sunlight. And he built up a world 
of his own on that island. When the breakers 
rushed skyward and the storm roared, he would 
stand by the window looking at the raging sea; 
there he stayed for hours, and no one could get 
him away. When the sky was blue and the wind 
swept mildly and gently over the island, he would 


BOOK ABOUT LITTLE BROTHER 115 


stroll along the shore all by himself, catching star- 
fish and learning how to play with boats. 

Most of all, however, he preferred the place 
where the pilots kept watch and where mamma sat 
with her work. There he would ask her to tell him 
all she knew about the sea. He was overjoyed 
when he had learned to run barefoot on the rocks, 
and he would pull up his little trousers and trip 
along on his pretty feet as cautiously as a little 
princess. But if the way was long, he wanted to 
be carried. And as no one could refuse anything 
Sven asked, there was always some one ready to 
give him a place on arm or shoulder. Then Sven 
looked around with pride, smiling in his sense of 
power and his happiness at being loved by all. 

But more than once when his parents were 
alone, his father would say: ‘‘He is stronger and 
healthier than he has ever been. Why, then, should 
he always be talking about death?” 

And she would answer, ‘‘I don’t teach him to do 
so. His thoughts come and go as they please. 
. . . « Now, look!” 

_ She pointed to the shore. There Sven sat by 

himself looking very happy and contented. He 
had a piece of string in his hand, and the string 
was tied to a piece of wood bearing a slight re- 
semblance to a boat. This he pulled ashore, loaded 
it with stones, and pushed it out again. 

‘“Can’t you hear?” asked Elsa. 


116 BOOK ABOUT LITTLE BROTHER 


- To hear better, we approached very carefully, 
without being noticed by Sven. 

He sat very still, letting the piece of wood ride 
on the waves, and all the time he was singing to 
himself in a faint, crystalline voice. What he sang 
was an old chanty that he had learned from the 
children on the island: 

And in the sea his grave was made. 

Then he caught sight of us, stopped, and shook 
his little fist at us, declaring that he would never 
sing when papa was listening. 


Chapter X 
] NOTICE that this book deals almost exclu- 


sively with our summers. The simple reason is 
that our sense of being alive was strongest in sum- 
mer. During the winter we lived in the capital, or 
so close to it that we could reach it at any time. 
Then the same thing happened to us as to almost 
everybody else. The life of the capital caught us 
in its frantic whirl and reduced the time when all 
of us could be together and feel our unity. Gone 
were the long confidential talks between my wife 
and myself; gone was our pleasant life with the 
children. Not even our Christmas—that season 
least of all—was free from the sense of strained 
hurry that leaves in its wake fatigue, repulsion, 
and discord. Therefore we looked to the summer 
as to a liberation from something evil, and leaving 
the capital was always like a renewal of ourselves 
and of our life in common. 

I shall now tell about our last summer —the 
last one during which we really had the sense of 
living —the summer that turned out so differently 
from what we had hoped and expected. 

This time we chose a place totally different from 
the islands of the west coast. We did so because 
my wife wished to surround herself with every- 
thing she had missed the preceding summer. 


118 BOOK ABOUT LITTLE BROTHER 


Whatever hold the sea had got on her, she never- 
theless retained a sort of grudge against it, because 
it wills to rule in solitary majesty, permitting no 
tall trees or flower-strewn grass-swards to grow in 


its immediate proximity. At heart she always: 


longed for leafy dells and flowers in abundance. 
Thus the victory won by me on behalf of the sea 
was not complete. The result was that we decided 
for the future to take turns in picking the spot for 
our summer outing. Furthermore, we wished to 
share this particular summer with others. We 
wished to revive what had filled our hearts during 
a time when our own happiness found its reflection 
in a circle of dear friends that came and went in 
our home as if it were their own. 

To make the contrast to the previous summer 
as striking as possible, we chose a large island just 
outside Stockholm, and there we made our sum- 
mer’s home in the upper story of an old manor out 
of repair. : 


The place had many large rooms. It had win-. 


dows out of plumb, soiled wallpaper, and huge 
old-fashioned verandas. One of these was long 
and narrow and turned toward the front yard. 
From the other one, which was smaller and over- 
looked the garden with its unswept gravel walks 
and its untrimmed berry bushes, one had a view 
over the tops of an oak grove to the point of land 
far beyond and the quiet glittering bay that was 


BOOK ABOUT LITTLE BROTHER 119 


framed in green leafage and had the appearance of 
an inland lake in the richest part of central Sweden. 
The verandas on both sides of the house were 
almost overgrown by wild grapevines, but one side 
of the veranda facing the water was wholly cov- 
ered by honeysuckle. You had the impression that 
the whole place would soon be overgrown, buried, 
swallowed up, and reclaimed by nature. When you 
sat in dreams on the smaller veranda, gazing 
across the garden toward the oak grove and the 
unruffled bay, it seemed natural to think that all 
the work of clearing and building about the place 
would disappear, and that a day would come when 
new people would find buried in the soil what had 
once sheltered the joys and sorrows or nourished 
the bodies of long forgotten human beings. To a 
person who sat there drinking in the mood of this 
place, whose productivity was of the past, such 
thoughts would come with a gentle melancholy 
quite free from any sense of dejection. To such 
a person it might seem as if the greatest happiness 
on earth would be to stay right there until the 
house collapsed and the weeds overpowered all 
cultivation, and then to fall asleep in company with 
the ruined structure and the ancient trees now 
crumbling to pieces from decay and old age—to 
become one, in a word, with the barren soil that 
also seemed tired of yielding the required suste- 
nance for its inhabitants. 


120 BOOK ABOUT LITTLE BROTHER 


Here lilacs grew in solid masses, laburnums 
swung ponderously and gorgeously above unkept 
beds where over-ripe peonies drooped toward the 
ground, and rosebushes contended with each other 
for air. Here was everything my wife loved in 
the way of atmosphere and nature. Here existed 
a sort of doomed and melancholy fertility that 
was attuned to the life of her own soul. Here she 
moved about from the first as if she had been 
always at home. Here we forgot that she had 
noticed symptoms of her old illness. Here we for- 
got that life and men had inflicted dread wounds 
on us, and that we had struck back in defense. 

Here we forgot the restraint of the winter and its 
-enervating pleasures. And across the bay we had 
friends between whose landing place and our own 
the boats travelled busily. Yet the environment lay 
heavily upon my mind, and I felt it a hindrance to 
my work. It submerged me in a mood different 
from anything I had previously experienced. But 
time passed, and with its passing came peace. The 
genius of work seized me with theretofore unsur- 
passed intensity, and nothing but Sven disturbed 
me. 

He was the only one who could never learn 
that papa should be left alone at his work. He 
opened the door very quietly as if to show how 
well he understood the importance of absolute 
silence. If I looked at him, he put one finger on 


BOOK ABOUT LITTLE BROTHER 121 


his lips and said “hush” with an expression so 
authoritative and so ingenuous that I simply had 
to put my pen away. But if I did not look up, he 
tiptoed softly to the writing desk and stood beside 
it. He could stand there patiently any length of 
time; and if I was strong-minded enough to pre- 
tend not to notice his presence, he would some- 
times leave again as silently as he had entered. 
This happened very seldom, however. If I turned 
my head ever so little, I would see his blue, ex- 
pectant eyes trying to meet mine, and then I was 
lost. 

‘What do you want, anyway?” I would ask. I 
felt that I ought to look very stern, but I knew 
that I could not. 

It was always some flower or stone or other 
rarity he had brought. And I surrendered uncondi- 
tionally. I put pen and paper aside and let Sver 
disturb me just as much as he pleased. Now I am 
very glad I did. 


Chapter XI 


IN these surroundings little Sven sang as he had 
sung all winter; and it was mostly for his sake, I 
believe, that Elsa for once insisted on having our 
piano brought to our summer home. _ 

Ever since mamma discovered that Sven could 
sing, it seemed natural for her to begin develop- 
ing his talent, and she was proud of his voice as of 
_ everything else he said, or did. She got him little 
song books and helped him to learn the words by 
heart, as Sven was only a little more than five 
years old and still far too young to read. And his 
mother vowed by all that is precious and holy 
that a long time should pass before he was plagued 
with anything so terrible. But he knew how to 
sing, and he knew many tunes. It happened rarely 
that he confused a tune, and if he did once in a 
great while, he looked very annoyed and started 
right over again. 

Nor was he timid about singing in the presence 
of visitors. As many might listen as cared to. 
‘Sven sang and smiled, and his big blue eyes beamed. 
Why should he be afraid of singing when he found 
it so jolly, and when he sang well anyway? 
Mamma had told him he did, and if she thought so, 
everybody else must think the same. 


BOOK ABOUT LITTLE BROTHER 123 


Of all the charming songs that Sven knew, none 
was prettier to hear than this one: 


Bah, bah, white lamb, 
Have you any wool? 
Yes, yes, baby dear, 
I have a bag full. 


Sunday coat for father and Sunday skirt for mother 

And two pairs of stockings for wee little brother. 

The last line of this song was the best thing 
Sven did. The moment he reached it, he began 
singing faster and faster, as if he wanted to swal- 
low the last word in order to have it to himself. 
“Wee little brother’ came far ahead of the piano 
accompaniment, and the reason was that he re- 
garded the two pairs of stockings as his own, and 
the whole line as a reference to himself. And why 
should the song not be written expressly for him 
who could sing and took such pleasure in it? 

No one else was permitted to sing that song, 
and no one else knew how to do it as Sven did — 
he who was Little Brother when alive, who was 
Little Brother in death as well, who was never 
anything else, and who will always live under 
that name. 


The windows in the living room are open. The 
fragrance of lilacs is carried in by the evening 
breeze. The sun is setting, and its last rays sparkle 
on the wall above the open piano. Mamma is at 
the piano, dressed in white, and the rest of us 


124 BOOK ABOUT LITTLE BROTHER | 
stand around her, while in the midst of us little 
Sven is singing: 


Sunday coat for father and Sunday skirt for mother 
And two pairs of stockings for wee little brother. 


It is Saint John’s Eve, and Sven is happy. 
Mamma has promised that this evening he need 
not go to bed until he wants to. It is far from him 
to desire anything of the kind, of course, and with 
his hand in mamma’s he walks the garden paths 
like his brothers and all the grown-up people until 
his eyes close of themselves and he is carried asleep 
to his bed, quite unconscious of his disappointment 
at not being able to stay up any longer. 

There he sleeps with his best friend on his arm 
—the little white wooden dog, which has wool 
like a lamb and eyes made of black pins, and which 
Sven has named Woolly. There is no more peace- 


| ful bed-fellow than Woolly. He disturbs nobody. 


But from the tops of trees outside the first faint 
chirping of birds heralds the dawn. 


Chapter XII 


I DON’T think Sven ever lived in. & mereemns 


plete communion with his mother than during this 
summer, or perhaps I had never before had such 
a chance of observing him. One of the reasons was 
probably that this summer, for the first time, we 
had to miss the company of our eldest boy, Olof, 
who had been sent northward to breathe forest 
air and become used to being away from home. 
The result was, of course, that the rest of us drew 
more closely together than usual. It is a fact that, 
- during this summer, I began unconsciously to look 
at Sven with his mother’s eyes. Never before had 
I been so struck by the difference between him and 
all other children I had known, although nothing 
about him failed of what is generally called child- 
ishness. 

I remember once being surprised on my morning 
walk at seeing him sit all by himself on the lawn, 
with a bunch of bluebells and buttercups in his 
hand. I asked him if he cared to take a walk with 
me through the park. This was an invitation 
which, as a rule, he accepted with delight. Great 
was therefore my astonishment when he refused 
energetically. 


“Don’t you want to go with papa, Sven?” I 


126 BOOK ABOUT LITTLE BROTHER 


felt a little hurt at what I regarded as a mere 

whim. 

_ Sven shook his head and remained sitting where 
he was. 

“But why ?” 

‘Because I am waiting for mamma,” was Little 
Brother’s decisive rejoinder. 

‘Don’t you know that mamma won’t be out 
until later? She is not so well as she used to be, 
and she must sleep late in the morning because 
she cannot sleep at night.” 

This was really the case. If it had not kept us 
from enjoying the summer and our happiness, this 
- was merely because, in the course of time, we had 
become so accustomed to the periodical return of 
my wife’s ailment that it seemed to us a natural 
and commonplace thing. 

Arguments had no effect on Sven, however, who 
remained obstinately seated as before. “I know 
that she will come to-day,” he said. 

I smiled at his assurance and passed on, think- 
ing less of his prediction than of this all- “consuming 
childish devotion that far outstripped his years — 
a devotion that caused him to remain inactive with 
a few flowers in his hand, merely in order that he 
might be sure to greet his mother the moment she 
appeared. 

As I walked along, I happened suddenly to turn 
about, and then I caught.a glimpse between the 


BOOK ABOUT LITTLE BROTHER 127 


jasmines of my wife’s white hat and her skirt of 
bright flowered stuff. At the same moment I heard 
Sven utter a wild whoop. 

Smilingly I retraced my steps and saw the boy 
clinging to his mother’s neck in a paroxysm of 
affection. I called to them, but Little Brother 
would not let go his hold. He clung to the place 
he was always striving to reach, and while I was 
still some distance off, he yelled at me with a mix- 
ture of irritation at my incredulity and triumph at 
being in the right, ‘“Do you see that she came! Do 
you see that I knew!” 

“I suppose you took a look inside,” I said. 

Words cannot describe the contempt for all ra- 
tionalistic interpretations of his feelings and intui- 
tions that Sven put into his reply, ‘““No, I didn’t. 
Did I, mamma ?” 

And mamma assured him éonsilonsty that he 
had done nothing of the kind. But to me she said: 
“You can’t believe how many times the same thing 
has happened. It is as if he felt my coming in the 
air. Children have that faculty at times, you 
know.” 


Chapter XIII 
SGARING 1h alk ieallchowesen, Sven Wascnct 


entirely himself this summer. Without apparent 
cause, he would suddenly declare himself tired, and 
then he wanted only to lie on the grass with his 
head in his mother’s lap. Or he came to papa with 
a request to be carried. Then papa put Sven on 
his shoulder and carried him through field and 
forest, and never was his glance more grateful or 
his slender white hand more tenderly caressing. 
Then he complained of headache and was given 
medicines. And then he would not get up morn- 
ings, but said he was too tired. As nothing seemed 
to be the matter with him, papa would take him 
out of bed and tell him that he must dress and get 
out in the open air. Sven did as he was told, and 
while papa remained in the room, he tried his best 
to get into his troublesome stockings. But no 
sooner was papa outside the door than he stole 
over to his mother and begged leave to crawl into 
bed with her. 
Mamma, of course, could not resist such a re- _ 
quest, and never was Sven more happy. There he 
lay with his head on mamma’s arm, closing his 
eyes and remaining very quiet until his strength 
began to return. Then he got up again, but before 
‘doing so he fixed his marvelous eyes on mamma. 


BOOK ABOUT LITTLE BROTHER 129 


‘Don’t tell papa, please!” 

‘Why not?” mamma would ask. 

‘Because then papa will get mad.” 

All this seemed so strange to mamma that she 
might have promised Sven anything, and so she 
promised what he asked. And Sven started out 
happy and contented because mamma would not 
betray his disobedience, and because he and 
mamma stood together. 

But when mamma had to go away, or even take 
a walk without him, he was in despair. There 
were no limits to his sorrow, and his crying was 
so heartbreaking, that you were forced to offer 
him all the consolations that could be invented. In 
fact, the sight of his passionate grief was so painful 
that you couldn’t forget it for a long time. One 
morning we discussed this matter. I had persuaded 
my wife to join me on an excursion to the city in 
order to dine with a couple of friends and to get 
out a little, as the saying goes. I had done so 
chiefly because I thought she needed a little absence 
from Sven. 

We succeeded finally i in forgetting sett impres- 
sion of the boy’s crying, and we spent a pleasant 
day in the city, as we always did when we knew 
that we didn’t have to stay there. The fun was at 
its highest when my wife asked me in a whisper, if 
I should dislike very much that she took an earlier 
boat for home. We did not get out very often for 


130 BOOK ABOUT LITTLE BROTHER 


a good time; so the suggestion was not much to 
my taste. I pointed out to Elsa that we had made 
it clear that we would take the last boat home, so 
that no one would be expecting us earlier. In a 
word, I made every objection I could think of. 
Finally I tried what I regarded as my chief argu- 
ment, ‘Sven will be in bed before you can get 
there.” | 

“Tt isn’t that,”’ she replied. “I simply want to 
go home.” She gave me a pleading look, and, of 
course, the outcome was that she left earlier than I. 

In the meantime Sven had been playing at home 
all the afternoon. But when his usual time for 
going to bed approached, he disappeared without 
leaving a trace behind. Our servant girls were not 
of the kind that take things very much to heart; 
and when they had called him once or twice with- 
out getting an answer, they resigned themselves to 
the thought that he would probably appear when it 
grew dark, and that master and mistress would 
not be home until later anyway. Consequently 
Sven was permitted to follow his own inclination. 
Toward eight o’clock he made his way to the pier 
where the steamer landed, and there he sat all 
alone. He didn’t know exactly when the steamer 
was due, and so he had to wait a good long while. 
But he sat there patiently and silently, and while 
the steamer was still far away and had many other 
landings to make, his mother caught sight of him. 


BOOK ABOUT LITTLE BROTHER 131 


He looked so small and forlorn, his little green 
crush-hat clearly visible against the blue water. 

The whole thing seemed very strange to her, as 
if she had known in advance that he would be 
sitting there, and her eyes clung all the time to the 
little figure seated on the bench at the pier, with 
bent back and drooping head, as if in deep thought. 
But when the steamer arrived, and mamma was 
about to go ashore, Sven stood excitedly in the 
middle of the pier, staring and staring as if his 
very life had been at stake. And as mamma came 
in sight, it was hard to tell who was the happier; 
he, who had not been sitting there in vain, or she, 
who had found her little boy waiting for her. 

“But how did you come to be here?” mamma 
asked, in the midst of her rejoicing. “I was not to 
get back until late to-night.” 

“Oh, I knew you would come,” said Sven. His 
eyes and voice were full of surprise at his mother’s 
not understanding such a simple thing. “I knew, 
of course, that you would come, and so I just sat 
here and waited.” 

In reply to mamma’s question whether he had 
been there long, he said: ‘Of course I have. 
Otherwise Hannah would have got hold of me, 
and then I should have been obliged to go to bed.” 

Mamma said nothing more. It never occurred 
to her to reproach him for having been, strictly 
speaking, disobedient. His innocent love, which 


132 BOOK ABOUT LITTLE BROTHER 


was the cause of it, shielded him from any re- 
proaches, and this he knew perfectly well. He 
looked sidewise up at mamma and smiled. “I 
fooled Hannah. I crawled behind the bushes so 
she couldn’t see me.’ 

“Did you, really?” said mamma. 

She and Sven walked home together happy as 
two accomplices in a successful crime, and the 
result was that he was put to bed that night by 
mamma herself —an occurrence that was not so 
very rare anyway, although he was six years old 
and on more serious occasions was called a “big 
boy.” 

How long it took when she was helping him to 
undress! Easily and gently she pulled off his gar- 
ments. Most carefully she washed his frail limbs, 
and the drying took an unusual time. But when 
the long night-shirt was on, the rest was easy. For 
a whilé she sat with the boy on her lap, dreaming 
of the time when he was very small and still got 
his sustenance from her. And when he was to go 
to bed at last, he never wanted to say his evening 
prayers. He invented a thousand tricks to prevent 
his mother from leaving him. But when the 
prayers were said, he put his arms about her and 
whispered, “It is 80 nice when you help me, for 
you never hurt me.’ 

Elsa bent still more deepls over his bed and 
whispered in reply. “I shall always help you. I'll 


BOOK ABOUT LITTLE BROTHER 133 


let no one else do it. Always until you can help 
yourself,” 

She thought herself richly rewarded for having 
interrupted her pleasure in order to get home, and 
when I arrived by the last boat, she lay awake in 
order to tell me all that Sven had said. 

After a merry day with my colleagues, the little 
traits related about the boy had a greater effect 
on me than they might otherwise have had. 

‘Do you know that a great and good man once 
used the selfsame words in telling me his impres- 
sions of his mother’s death?” I said. “He, too, 
was about six years old, and it was a question of 
the same thing—changing clothes at night. He 
used the very words: ‘Until then no one had hurt 
me.’ 99 j 

I stood by Sven’s little bed, looking at him a 
long time. There was a suggestion of hollowness 
about his temples. But he was sleeping soundly, 
‘and so I bent down and kissed his forehead. 

We tried to change the subject, but the thought 
of the boy so filled my mind that I could give my 
attention to nothing else. 

‘Has this ever occurred to you?” I asked. “I 
can think of Olof as a grown-up person, as mature. 
And of Svante, too. They are quite different, and 
yet this applies to both. But Sven? Can you imag- — 
ine him grown up? Where will you place him in 
this world? Where will he fit in except with us?” 


134 BOOK ABOUT LITTLE BROTHER 


‘My wife smiled with a sad expression that pro- 
duced a net of infinitesimal wrinkles about her 
mouth. ‘It’s a thing I have often thought about,” 
she said. And in pursuit of her own reflections she 
added: “That is the reason, perhaps, why I love 
him above everything else in the world. More 
than the other boys. More than you. I have often 
thought of it, and I know that if one of the big 
boys died, I should never cease to mourn for him. 
But I think I could bear the loss for the sake of 
you who remained. If you should die—I have 
never dared to think of it. But if Sven were to die, 
then I could not live either. I have often thought 
of telling you, for I wanted you to know it.” 

She held out her hand to me, and her eyes 
sought mine as if she wished to apologize for 
thinking herself able to live without me. When 
we had turned off the light, I lay awake a long 
time repeating her words in my mind. I fell asleep 
believing that I should never know whether or not 
she was telling the truth. 


Chapter XIV 
SVEN became so ill that he had to be put to bed. 


Although we knew his case to be fairly serious, he 
had so little temperature that we never looked for 
any real danger. I went on writing busily, and 
my wife sat by his sickbed, holding his hand and 
telling him stories when he was strong enough to 
listen. 

The doctor told us that the boy would be ill a 
good while, but otherwise he felt very hopeful; 
and as | had long had a journey in mind, I went 
away for a few days, feeling pretty sure that the 
worst would be over on my return. I spent three 
whole days with some dear friends, and I enjoyed 
both friendship and the beauties of nature without 
experiencing any considerable degree of anxiety. 
But when I had boarded the train to return by way 
of Stockholm to my home, I was seized by an anxi- 
ety I couldn’t control. Just before starting I had 
a talk with my wife by telephone. I heard her 
voice in the distance trembling with joy: Sven was 
better! He had sat up in bed, laughing and prat- 
tling. He had had something to eat, and he had 
asked mamma to remember him to ‘‘the old man,” 
which was his particular pet name for me when 
he was in very high spirits. The outlook seemed 


136 BOOK ABOUT LITTLE BROTHER 


excellent, in other words, and yet I could not rid 
myself of anxiety. 

It was ten in the evening when I reached Stock- 
holm. I arrived at the very minute when the last 
boat left for our home. Therefore, I went straight 
to the hotel where I used to stop. It was dark, 
and the rain was pouring down. I entered the 
lobby quickly, suffering from the sense of being a 
complete stranger that always overtook me when 
I was forced to visit Stockholm in the summer and 
knew I should have to be alone. Before I had 
time to ask for a room, the head porter came 
toward me and asked me to ring up a certain 
number at once. 

- I did so, and was merely told that the doctor 
had left for my home, and that I must take a cab 
and follow immediately. 

The blow was so heavy and so sudden that it 
paralyzed me, and the more feverishly I stirred 
about the more automatic my own movements 
seemed to me. I ordered a carriage, and as | did 
so, it occurred to me that I ought to eat a little. 

“Sven is dead,” I thought. ‘He won't live until 
I get home. I must not arrive hungry and tired. I 
must be able to keep awake and console my wife.” 

All this passed through my mind while I was 
waiting for the carriage. I could see myself as if 
I were another person. I could see myself putting 
meat on a plate, cutting it, and trying to eat it. 


BOOK ABOUT LITTLE BROTHER 137 


‘All the time I could only think of one thing, the 
carriage that didn’t come. God in heaven! That 
carriage never came, and at home my boy was 
dying, and I couldn’t reach him. ~ 

I paid the bill and returned to the lobby, where 

I strayed back and forth, incapable of sitting still, 
incapable of a single clear thought. ‘“‘One of my 
children is dying,” I said to the head porter. 
‘“That’s why I am so nervous.”’ 

I tried to smile at him in order to- make him 
understand that I recognized perfectly the sense- 
lessness of my own behavior. But I could feel my 
smile turning into a grimace, and [| didn’t wait for 
his answer. I merely continued walking with my 
watch in my hand as if trying to make the time go 
faster, and when the cab arrived at last, I felt sure 
that it was all over. I did not understand why I 
was sitting in that vehicle, or why I should be 
driving through the downpour, but I said to the 
driver in the same automatic way as before: 
‘Drive as fast as your horse can run. My little 
boy is dying. You won’t regret it.”’ 

We had often had the same driver. 

‘Ts it the nice little boy with the beautiful face ?” 
he asked. 

His simple words called me back to reality. A 
tide of warm gratitude toward the young man on 
the coachman’s box swept through my _ heart. 
“Yes,” I said, chokingly, “‘it is he.” 


138 BOOK ABOUT LITTLE BROTHER 


I sat back in the carriage with a sense of having 
found a man who knew what was at stake and 
who wished to help me. As we flew through the 
streets, I spoke to myself in a low tone, and cried, 
half in joy and half in sorrow: 

‘He is so beautiful and so sweet that evena man . 
who merely has seen him enter a carriage remem- 
bers it and has to speak of it. And he must die. 
Millions of children are permitted to live. Why 
should my child die?” 

Never did I travel faster by carriage, and never 
did the way seem longer. I saw the sparks from 
the horse’s hoofs fly through the darkness. I no- 
ticed that it was raining less heavily. I watched 
the landscape sweep by like a phantasmagoria. All 
the time I was muttering incomprehensible words | 
to myself, not knowing how they happened to drop 
from my tongue. It was as if, through the dark- 
ness, I had been carried toward the thing that 
must befall, and I asked nothing but delay — noth- 
ing but that he should live till my arrival, so that 
I might once more feel his arms about my neck 
and hear his voice. 

Onward we flew—onward at a maddening 
speed. The carriage jumped from one side of the 
road to the other. But it never occurred to me 
that anything might break, or that we might be 
upset. A fine fellow, that driver, I thought; he 


BOOK ABOUT LITTLE BROTHER 139 


remembers my little boy who is’so pretty and 
sweet, and who must not die. 

“Tt is a father and his child,’ I said aloud to 
myself. Es ist der Vater mit seinem Kind. Un- 
consciously, I was quoting poetry to myself. A 
spasmodic sob contracted my throat and made me 
choke. To get air, I leaned out of the carriage and 
studied the_scenery. I knew every view, every turn 
of the road. The shaking of the carriage as it 
passed over rocks now told me that we had entered 
the short side-road leading up to our home. With 
every sense alert, I tried to penetrate the dark- 
ness, and I perceived the shadowy form of a cab 
standing in the front yard. The doctor was still 
there! The doctor was still there! Then I heard 
the voice of my wife from the veranda, ‘“‘He is 
coming! Thank God, he is here!” 

In a few seconds more I had climbed the stairs 
and stood in the living-room. 

I was in the room, but my agitation was such 
that I could make nothing out of what I saw. I 
had a sense of the doctor’s presence, and I could 
feel my wife clinging passionately to me. It was 
clear to me that she looked happy, more than 
happy, and that I ought to do the same. I heard 
something about a fainting spell that was over and 
that meant nothing in particular, the doctor hoped. 
But I was incapable of saying or thinking any- 
thing. This piece of good fortune came so unex- 


140 BOOK ABOUT LITTLE BROTHER 


pectedly that it could not rouse me from the 
terrible numbness that still possessed me. Mechan- 
ically I pulled off my gloves and my overcoat, and 
yet I remained standing on the same spot as if 
trying to accustom my eyes to the brilliancy of the 
lighted room. 

‘Don’t you want to go in?” my wife asked. 
‘Don’t you want to see him? He is still awake.”’ 
Her voice sounded slightly reproachful, as if she 
couldn’t understand. 

“Yes, yes,” I said. And still unconscious of 
what was really happening, I walked into Sven’s 
room and saw him lying in his bed, looking up at 
me. “Don’t you know papa, Sven?” 

‘Yes,”’ replied Sven, with a suggestion of sur- 
prise in his voice. He.could not understand why 
all the grown-up people looked so disturbed and 
miserable. He reached out his little hand to pat 
me, and I saw how thin and transparent it had 
become. 

As I stood there leaning down over the boy, I 
realized at last that my child was still alive. I 
placed his hand over my eyes, and I felt a weight 
dropping from my chest and a veil withdrawn 
from my vision. : 


Chapter XV 


THE time that followed was singularly full of 
hope, anxiety, despair, misgivings. The doctor had 
foretold a long period of illness. Therefore, we 
prepared to wait in patience and we really tried to 
practice this virtue. During the next two long 
weeks Sven’s illness became a part of our custom- 
ary every-day life, as always happens when illness | 
takes up its abode in a home. Every morning I 
worked at my book, without letting myself be dis- 
turbed. Every day my wife divided her time be- 
tween Sven and me, sitting in his room because he 
felt at ease when she was near, and stealing out 
when he fell asleep, so that she might get a little 
fresh air and tell me about all the promising indi- 
cations which her vigilant eye constantly seemed to 
discover. Svante was left to himself and kept very 
silent. Now and then he rowed across the bay to 
tell his friends, the little girls, that Little Brother 
was very sick and that everything was hushed and 
quiet at home. 

We had to engage a nurse in order that my wife 
might get some rest at night. It was done in spite 
of numerous protests on the part of Elsa. She was 
so jealous about the boy that she could not bear to 
have him ask for or get help from any one else. It 
was only when she noticed her strength giving out 


142 BOOK ABOUT LITTLE BROTHER 


that she bowed to the inevitable and gave her con- 
sent with tears in her eyes. 

A few hours after the arrival of the nurse, how- 
ever, my wife came to me and told me with joy 
in her eyes that Sven had taken greatly to his new 
friend. “You can help me, for you are nice,” was 
what he said to her. 

Then he closed his eyes and lay still, as was his 
habit, with the ice pack on his head that always 
ached, and his little lean hands on top of the 
coverlet. 

One day we were suddenly disturbed by a: hand- 
organ in the yard. As Sven that day had eaten a 
little, and talked and looked quite bright, we asked 
if he would like to be carried out into the yard to 
look at the monkey. 

_ Otherwise Sven always came rushing the mo- 
ment an organ grinder approached. Breathlessly 
he would come to beg papa for pennies. It was 
his joy to give; and when he came with his pennies, 
looking as radiantly happy as if he had known 
what it means for a poor strolling player to get 
‘money for food, he set dusky faces smiling with a 
great display of white teeth, and bright brown 
eyes glistening in response to his own blue. 

But now he drooped on papa’s arm, looking 
very tired and small. He was carefully wrapped 
in a blanket and had socks on his feet. Thus papa 
carried him in his arms to the veranda so that he 


BOOK ABOUT LITTLE BROTHER 143. 


could look out upon the sunlit yard, whence rose 
the merry notes of the hand-organ. 

He looked in a tired and estranged manner at 
the trees, the front yard, and the cluster of chil- 
dren gathered in the sunlight. And all the time his 
glance was puzzled, as if he had pondered why 
these things were not so jolly as they used to be. 
He tried to draw his lips into a smile when he saw 
the monkey, which usually amused him more than 
anything else, and which now clambered up and 
down the organ, rattling his light chain and making 
horrid faces as he tried to crack a nut. 

But it made him tired to look at it. He grew 
more and more serious. He leaned more and more 
heavily against papa’s shoulder. It was as if he 
had been far away, looking down upon the earth’s 
beauties and gayeties, yearning for them, but feel- 
ing that they no longer belonged to him. He leaned 
his head against papa’s shoulder, and soon he was | 
carried back to bed. 

Mamma herself put him there and adjusted his 
pillows. “Did you not enjoy it, Sven?” 

‘Yes, but I am still too tired. I'll be all right 
soon.” . 
Then mamma leaned far over Little Brother, 
patting his hair, but unseen by him she held out 
her other hand in search of mine, which she pressed 

convulsively, 


Chapter XVI 


ONE night I sat alone in my room, knowing. that 
next day the doctors would come to pronounce sen- 
tence of life or death on little Sven. I knew there 
would be two of them, because our family physi- 
cian, no longer daring to rely on his own judgment, 
wished to consult a specialist. I sat alone, with the 
lamp lighted and in front of me a manuscript 
lacking its final chapters. 

I bade my wife good-night, saying that I should 
sit up working. 

“How can you work to-night ?” she said. There 
was a shade*of bitterness in her tone as if she 
meant that I was not feeling what she felt. Then 
she repented, put her head close to mine and said, 
“You are lucky to be able to do it.” 

Now I sat alone, every nerve quivering under 
an upheaval of my soul so complicated and so 
profound that I can hardly describe it. I hoped in 
spite of all that my child might live. In fact, I 
believed it. At the same time I had a sense that 
now I must write—now or never. I knew prac- 
tically every word that ought to appear on the 
sheets lying clean and untouched in front of me. 
Necessity drove me, and I wrote, filling the white 
pages one by one and putting them away on the 
pile of manuscript rising in front of me on the 


_ BOOK ABOUT LITTLE BROTHER 145 


desk. It was as if the voice of some invisible pres- 
-ence had whispered its command into my ear. | 
must obey this voice— obey it blindly. I felt im- 
pelled by a restless haste, as if knowing that life 
was at stake. 

‘To-morrow,’ said a voice within me. ‘To- 
morrow! Who knows what may happen to-mor- 
row? It is possible that your child may die. Then 
you cannot write. Then the demand on you will 
be: ‘Money, and more money!’ You might revise 
your book, you might improve it, but you could 
not finish it if your child should die.” 

My thoughts drove me_like lashes of a whip, 
and already I could see the morning light through 
the shades mingling with the light from the lamp 
on my paper. ; 

‘Money! Money! You must have money if 
your child should die and your wife is to be saved.”’ 

Through the voices speeding my work I heard 
a melody which seemed familiar: “‘Es ist der Vater 
mit seinem Kind!” A father with his child. Where 
had I heard it before? Where had I heard it? 
When did I feel that restless haste? It was as if 
the lash of a whip whistled, as if hoofs struck 
sparks from a stony road, as if I felt the night air 
cool my burning head. I wrote and I wrote. And 
I recalled my mad drive when I thought my child 
was dead. 

Then I ceased to think of my child. I thought 


146 BOOK ABOUT LITTLE BROTHER - 


of her who must possess me undividedly if there 
was to be any hope of her staying with me, once 
the incomprehensible thing had happened, and 
Sven had died. I wrote and wrote as no man ever 
wrote for money —wrote some of the best pages 
that ever came from my pen. And when my 
strength failed, I drank—-drank deep to keep 
myself alive. 

The sun had been up a good while when I wrote 
the last lines. Then I sat a little longer as if 
paralyzed. 

I gathered up the scribbled sheets, put them in 
my drawer, and stole out of the room to listen at 
the door within which Sven lay. At that moment 
it was opened, and my wife looked out. I stag- 
gered toward her, saying, ‘‘It is done.” 

She smiled at me, and there was a world of 
happiness in her voice as she:said, ‘‘He is sleeping 
so quietly. I don’t think there can be any danger.” 

Ieft her, and a few minutes later I was asleep, 
dead with fatigue. 


Chapter XVII 


BEFORE the end of the next day we knew that 
there was nothing to be done, and that little Sven 
must die. The certainty came like a heavy blow, 
for until then we had continued to hope. We stood 
in the hallway. The two physicians were silent and 
grave. My wife’s eyes clung to their faces as if 
she believed that they had not yet said their last 
word. I looked from one to the other as I put my 
arm about my wife’s waist, trying to pull her away, 
and I noticed the twitchings on the sensitive face 
of our friend, the doctor. The professor spoke 
slowly and in a low voice as if every word cost 
him an effort. All I could feel was that the inevi- 
table had come, and that I must steel myself to 
face it. But having conveyed all her misery to me 
by a pressure of her hand, my wife made herself 
free from my arm that was about her waist, and 
wringing her hands so that you literally could hear 
their bones crack, she cried out, ‘“Tell me that 
there is hope! Oh, tell me!” 

The two men avoided her glance. Then she 
straightened herself up and said, ‘‘He sha’n’t die. 
[’ll show you that he will live.” 

She left us, and silently we watched her disap- 
pear toward the sickroom. All of us understood 
how deeply she felt that every possible hope was 


148 BOOK ABOUT LITTLE BROTHER 


gone, and we understood that this was the very 
reason why she vowed to snatch him from death 
—§in spite of all. We said good-bye without many 
words, and I followed the direction my wife had 
taken —not knowing what to say to her, but in 
order to be by her side and perhaps to see what I 
dreaded more than anything else. 

I did not find her in the sickroom. I found her 
in my own room. Her face looked as if turned to 
stone. She crouched on the sofa, her hand pressed 
hard against her cheek, her eyes dry and lustreless. 
She was staring into a great darkness. Her figure, 
her face, even her hands, showed it. I tried speak- 
ing to her. I tried calling her by name. She did 
not answer. At last I had to leaye her to her own 
sorrow, waiting fearfully for the words that would 
come when that sorrow found voice. 

A long time passed before her silence was 
broken, and then it was not broken by words. My 
wife held out her hand to me and pulled me close 
to herself on the sofa. Then she fell into my arms, 
and both of us were convulsed by prolonged sob- 
bing that seemed to spring from a single breast. 
“T am so sorry for you,” she whispered. “I am so 
sorry !” 

“For me?” I freed myself and looked up. 
There was something in her voice that filled me 
with a foreboding which I would not permit to 
take the form of thought. 


BOOK ABOUT LITTLE BROTHER 149 


She clasped her hands before me and almost 
screamed: ‘‘You are not asking me to live after 
this—to live without ie I can’t do it. I 
cannot !”’ 

She had put my foreboding into: meee and I 
stood helpless, unable to speak a word. 

- “Sit down beside me,’”’ she said. “I shall not 
lose control of myself. I'll talk calmly. There is 
no anxiety leftin me. I feel merely how everything 
is giving way. I am no longer here, although you 
cannot grasp it because you know so little, and 
because I have been able to say so little. And why 
should I tell you before it was absolutely neces- 
sary? I have wished to go on living with you, 
George. I have wished it because I have loved you 
more than anything else in life. I am no longer 
young. I am older than you could ever become. 
But you have never known it. You have never 
wanted to see that it was so. And seeing you 
happy, I did not want to disturb you. But as far 
back as I can remember, I have known that I was 
different from other people. Within me [| have 
had a craving to die. Can you understand what I 
am saying now, George? I can hardly understand 
it myself. When most happy with you and the 
children and everything that is beautiful, I have 
always known that one day I must leave it all, and 
that nothing could hold me back. Willynilly, 


whether I wished it or not, I must enter the dark- 


150 BOOK ABOUT. LITTLE BROTHER 


ness where I belonged. I have had a feeling that 
something would compel me, something would tell 
me I must. Do you recall the winter, George, 
when everything that was dark and depressing 
came between. you and me? Then I tried to write 
you what was the matter with me. To speak was 
more than I was able. But I couldn’t write either. 
I couldn’t tell you what I wanted to tell, and I 
remember wondering why you didn’t ask me— 
why you didn’t ask me often and insistently, even 
_after I had begged you not to do so. Sometimes I 
wanted you to ask me. Most of the time I was 
glad you didn’t. How I suffered during that time, 
George! If you could imagine how I suffered! 
You came to me, and took my hand, and sat down 
beside me, and it did not make me happy, as it 
used to. I knew that day after day I was wonder- 
ing how I could find a chance to die and leave you. 
| I wanted to take my own life, George. Can you 
understand that in the midst of my happiness I 
wanted to take my own life? You were nice to me, 
and kind, and pleasant, and I felt as if I were a 
‘faithless woman, playing you false. And do you 
know why I wanted to leave you? Because I knew 
it must happen some day, and for this reason I 
preferred to go while you were young and strong 
and could forget me quickly and become happy 
with another woman.” | 

She remained silent a moment, her eyes brim- 


BOOK ABOUT LITTLE BROTHER 151 


ming with tears. Then she resumed, and it was as 
if she spoke with a new voice: 

“Then came little Sven, and everything changed. 
Do you remember, George, that I told you so at 
the time? Do you remember that I told you? I 
believed that God had sent him to keep me alive, so 
that I could make you as happy as I wished, and 
every night I prayed to the Lord that I might. I 
really believed that God had heard me, and it was 
this I talked of with little Sven, when we were 
alone and no one could hear what we said. But 
now, George, now he is leaving me. I know now 
that all the rest of it—all that you have never 
known until now—must return. And now I only 
want you to forgive me for all the sorrow I have 
caused you before and for all the sorrow I am 
causing you now. But you must not ask me to stay. 
Where Sven goes, there I must go, too.” 

_ At that moment she seemed greater to me than 
human beings really can be. I was so completely 
unprepared for what she had told me, that it 
seemed as if she had related some dreadful night- 
mare which I could not transform into reality. But 
I felt, too, that at the very moment when she 
caused me the greatest of sorrows, she revealed to 
me the full extent of a love at sight of which I 
could only hold out my hands in prayer that it be 
not taken away from me at the moment it became 
wholly mine. 


152 BOOK ABOUT LITTLE BROTHER 


“T cannot bear it,” I almost shouted. “I cannot 
bear it. To lose both you and him. You cannot 
mean that.” 

Rising noiselessly, she stood in front of me like 
a Niobe spreading her arms to shield her children 
against the arrows of the gods seeking them out 
even at their mother’s bosom. 

“Let me take Sven along,” she said. “He must 
die at all events. I shall carry him down to the 
water this evening when all are asleep. It will be 
such a brief struggle. And then I don’t need to 
torture you more than I already have done.” 

I placed myself in her way, and with all the 
strength my arms possessed, I pushed her violently 
down on the sofa. “Wait;” I said. “Wait! You 
don’t know what you are doing.” 

Her only reply was: “It will be your misfortune, 
and mine, if you prevent me. Don’t accuse me 
when it comes.” : 

She writhed in pain as I held her. After a while 
she fell into a swoon. I laid her on the sofa, and it 
seemed as if all that had just been said was a mad 
dream. I stood a long time looking at her, until I 
heard her breathing grow slow and steady, and I 
knew she was asleep.. Then I placed a pillow under 
her head and spread a blanket over her. 

The agitation of my mind made me stumble as 
I walked to the room where Sven lay sick. His 
right eye was almost closed, while the left one had 


BOOK ABOUT LITTLE BROTHER 153 
become strangely large and bright. I bent over 
him, took his innocent little hand and carried it to 
my lips. 

“My beloved child,” I soins “Neither one 
of us can help the other.” : 


Chapter XVIII 


WE had moved Sven’s bed to the room next to 
the veranda and opened the doors so that he might 
hear the singing of the birds and the sighing of 
the winds. There he lay in his white bed, and 
when he looked up, it was in the expectation of 
being kissed; or perhaps he made a movement 
with his weak little hands, and then we bent over 
him because we knew that he wanted to pat us. 

Svante was walking about on tiptoe in the bed- 
room, and his heart was full of the mystery that - 
Little Brother must die. He stood looking at him 
for many minutes, and then he bent down to kiss 
his cheek. But when mamma was awake again and 
entered the room, Svante went to meet her and 
put his arms about her neck. 

I shall never forget the look of speechless 
despair with which she took hold of the boy’s head 
and gazed into his eyes. 

“Have you telegraphed for Olof?” she asked 
me. 

I nodded affirmatively, and again I saw her bend 
over Svante and press him close to herself. Moved 
by some sudden instinct, I rose and walked out, 
leaving my wife alone with the child that was well 
and the one that was dying. As I turned in the 
doorway, I saw my wife leading Svante to Little 


BOOK ABOUT LITTLE BROTHER 155 


Brother’s bed. She sat down on one side of it and 
made the boy seat himself on the opposite side. 
Then she leaned down over Sven. But all the time 
she kept a firm hold of Svante’s hand, and I could 
see her caressing both children without the least 
distinction. 

When Svante finally came out a the room, | 
went in and took his place opposite my wife. She 
held out her hand to me over the dying child and 
said: ‘‘Whether it be for good or ill, I don’t know. 
But I shall stay with you. I believe now that it is 
God’s will.’’ A moment later she added, ‘‘Svante 
wishes it, too. I have talked with him.” 

Incapable of an answer, I bent down and kissed 


her hand. At that moment neither one of us knew ) 


what was good and what was evil. 


—_ a oe 


Chapter XIX 
ANY effort to distinguish the days that followed 


would be futile. I could not even tell their number. 
Night changed into day, and day into night, and 
our entire life turned about a single centre: the 
little room where the air was full of fragrance 
from the blossoming honeysuckle that covered 
the veranda outside,.and where our little boy lay 
struggling with death. 

Here we came and went, sat down together, 
slept, ate, watched. Here all that we had lived 
and dreamed was merged into one vast consuming 
sense of pain. Here, as the last hope waned, my 
wife herself replaced the cork in the bottle of 
musk. She, who wished to die with him, removed 
the last means of stimulation, lest she should later 
reproach herself with having disturbed the little 
one’s last moments for the sole purpose that we 
might enjoy the brilliancy of his big eyes once 


more. 


His right eye was extinguished, dead. The eye- 
lid was closed as if one half of his little head 


_ already had ceased to live. But when the left eyelid 


was raised, that eye shone so much the brighter. 
It grew big and profound as if already gazing at 
another world, to which his father and mother had 
not yet access, and which they could not enter until 


-BOOK ABOUT LITTLE BROTHER 157 


the last veil was rent and they followed him on 
the road where the bell of death is ringing, and 
where whoever hears it ring must follow, no matter 
what ties may hold him back on earth. 

Here we sat when the sun of day was shining, 
when the rain fell outside, and when the night 
lamp in the sickroom spread its faint flickering 
light over the white bed. And as for little Sven 
himself, who was the goal of our glances and the 
object of our subdued conversations —Sven, for 
whom in the end we wished nothing but freedom 
from continued suffering: quietly as he had lived, 
so he lay there to the end, and as my wife bent 
over him, his tired lips moved, and he kissed her. 
‘Give papa a pat, Sven,” she said. ‘‘Papa is here.” 

Then he turned his big tired eye toward me and 
put his slender white hand against my cheek with 
the movement of one stirring in his sleep. 

Thus we sat the last night, and never were two 
human beings closer together. We held each other’s 
hands over the child’s bed, and we started eagerly 
lest any sign of life on his face should be lost as 
he opened his big eye in search of us. We spoke 
to each other, “Did you see that? Did you see?”’ 

And while we greedily gathered these treasures 
of memory that would be the only thing left to us, 
the slow hours of the night passed by, and dawn 
rose on the bay, the oaks, the old garden beneath 
our window. 


158 BOOK ABOUT: LITTLE BROTHER 


As if through a desire to set Little Brother’s 
soul free to fly along the road where we could not 
follow, we opened the doors to the veranda and 
let the fresh morning air stream in. It had rained 
during the night, and the sun was breaking through 
rent clouds, while the mist was scudding across the 
waters of the bay. The sun rose higher and higher, 
and its rays started the birds singing. This won- 
derful awakening of all nature carried us away to 
such an extent that we had to exercise the utmost 
self-control in order not to disturb the sleeping 
child. ; 

‘‘Look,”’ gaid Elsa. “Do you see? All must be 
beautiful as this when he is to die.”’ 

Still the angel of death tarried. Still the child’s 
breathing remained slow and regular. And fatigue 
overwhelmed us. I almost had to use force in 
order to make my wife lie down on the sofa beside. 
the boy’s bed. There she fell asleep with one hand 
resting on his bed. As the morning sun continued 
to rise, I alone remained awake listening to their 
heavy breathing. .A calm resignation descended 
upon me, and I prayed for an end to our common 
suffering. I sat thus until my wife rose from her 
slumber. Then we changed places, and utterly 
tired out, I fell asleep with my hand resting where 
hers had rested a few moments earlier. 

A couple of hours passed, and the sun mounted 
ever higher on a clear summer ‘day. I was waked 


BOOK ABOUT LITTLE BROTHER 159 


~ by the touch of my wife’s hand on my arm. “Wake 
up, George,” she said. “Sven is dying.” 

I could not stay in the room, but went out into 
the garden. Thinking that I might bring him a 
last pleasure—he had always loved flowers—I 
picked the most beautiful rosebud in sight, went 
back to the room and put it on my boy’s pillow, 
beside the eye that still could see. Then I went out 
on the veranda, incapable of enduring it any 
longer. From there I heard Svante enter the room 
and sit down by the bed. But I did not turn around. 
I walked back and forth, listening to that drawn- 
out, dreadful breathing that seemed to come from 
a grown-up person and that cut me to the very soul. 
Then I heard my wife utter a sound that caused 
me to turn. 

Sven had opened his eye and caught sight of 
the rose. He reached out his hand and picked up 
the flower as if wishing to have a last glance at it 
before he let it fall back on the pillow. 

Suddenly his whole body was shaken by hor- 
rible, prolonged paroxysms. They began at the 
head, which became twisted to one side, and then 
they passed through the body into the limbs, which 
turned stiff and blue. My wife inclined her head 
to escape the sight. But when the attack ceased, 
she was crying quietly, and once more she held out 
her hand to me over the little bed. 

Thus we sat until his breathing ceased... . 


160 BOOK ABOUT LITTLE BROTHER 


was resumed . . . . became deeper and stronger 

. and ceased again. No sound was heard. 
The silence of death reigned. Bent and weeping, 
we watched the last fluttering of the soul that 
already had taken flight. 

We had held one of his hands each. Simul- 
taneously we let the cold hands drop down on the 
coverlet. 

Then my wife left the room to seek rest. But I 
sat there alone and noticed with horror the silence 
that had fallen upon everything. 


Olof arrived that afternoon. On kis return 
from his first visit to the outside world, he went 
with his father and mother to the bed where Little 
Brother lay dead. There he cried in a quiet, manly 

fashion. But when he was back in the livingroom 
again, Svante came with earnest face to show one 

_/of his fingers. 

| There was a deep mark in it, and Svante de- 

scribed how it had been made by one of Little 
Brother’s nails just before he died. That mark 
remained several days, and the boy missed it when 
it was gone. 


Chapter XX 


A LITTLE yellow coffin stands on the very spot — 
where, not long ago, stood a bed with a living child 
in it. Now the room is decorated with roses. One 
sees practically nothing but roses. Then a lonely 
woman enters through the door. 

She carries a child on her arms, and the child is 
dead. She does not want any one but herself to 
touch her darling, and with trembling hands she 
places the little body in the coffin. On his arm she 
puts a little woolly dog that used to be his bed- 
fellow when he was well and full of gayety, and 
no one thought of death. Woolly is to accompany 
his master. He is a peaceful bedfellow and dis- 
turbs nobody. Then she makes sure that her boy 
lies easily, and she fixes his bed as if he had just 
said his evening prayers, and she had come to bid 
him good-night. She looks at him as if her heart 
were near bursting, and she kisses his cold lips. 

Then she goes away, and I stand there alone, 
holding the lid which I have promised her should 
be fastened by no one but myself. I turn and turn 
the screws, and the grinding noise made by the 
driver as the screws penetrate the wood resembles 
_ the sound I should make if I were gritting my 
teeth with pain. : 

But when all is done, I no longer feel any pain. 


162 BOOK ABOUT LITTLE BROTHER 


It is as if the agony of the last days had burned out 
of me any capacity for further emotion, and wher- 
ever I look, my eyes are met by nothing but flowers. 

I go out on the veranda and smell the fra- 
grance of honeysuckle rising out of the darkness 
——the same fragrance that surrounded me when 
I felt my little boy’s fingers squeeze mine with the 
force of death. Everything within me is melted 
away, gone. I think of her that just left the room, 
and of all I know to be in store. I feel that I shall 
never have time to mourn him as I wish — my little 
boy with the eyes of an angel—and all by myself 
I kneel beside his coffin: I, who don’t know to 
whom I kneel or to whom I shall pray. 


Chapter XXI 


THERE is a little grave in the cemetery. It 
looks like a miniature garden, with a boxwood 
hedge, a rosebush, and a freshly sodded mound, 
the top of which is closely carpeted with pansies. 
It is different from any other grave, and above it 
a solitary linden spreads its green leafage. 

On the mound is a stone, and on the stone appear 
these words: 

“Our little Sven.”’ 

There sleeps our happiness, which once upon a 
time surpassed that of all other people. Beneath 
that sod my wife’s soul is held a prisoner, bound 
by magic ties, and no love can bring it back to the 
world above, 





PART III 


Only what you lose is held forever. 
HENRIK IBSEN. 








PART THREE 
Chapter I | 


OT one thing of all that I expected or feared 
failed to come about. It seemed different 
: merely because, as my misfortune grew by 
degrees, I continued unwilling to believe in it, 
even when I had foreseen it and knew that it would 
come. All of us human beings know that sorrow 
must come. We never know, on the other han 
- how it really will come. | 
When a sufficient number of days had passed to 
let me settle down and think over what had hap- 
pened, the first thing I felt and realized, with a 
sense of inexpressible horror, was that never had 
my wife spoken more directly out of her innermost 
soul than when she sat beside me in my room, 
saying that she was born to misfortune and that 
now, when Sven was gone, she would live only to 
die. Again and again I repeated her words. Again 
and again they sounded in my ears. The longer I 
considered them the more sure I became that 
within her raged a struggle between a real craving 
to die and her love for me and the children, which 
commanded her to live. More and more, however, 
the foremost place in my mind was taken by all 
that she had said about her love for us, while 
the dreadful words that spoke of a yearning for 


168 BOOK ABOUT LITTLE BROTHER 


death that bordered on a will to die, were pushed 
in the background. I saw her torn between the 
affection tying her to us three that still lived and 
the mysterious longing that drew her to the one 
already passed away. We had formerly been 
united in her mind, and her suffering sprang from 
the fact that she knew herself incapable of recon- 
. ciling the hostile forces at war within her soul. 
I saw all this. I saw it during a journey to 
which I persuaded her in order to bring her face 
to face with the sea and the sun, with new people 
and new impressions of life. I shall never forget 
_ this journey. I shall never forget the sense of 
hopelessness that laid hold of me as, week by week, 
I noticed more clearly how everything she saw 
_ passed her by as if to her it had no existence. She- 
concealed a great deal from me. She even con- 
cealed her tears, and I understood that she did so 
merely because she perceived that I lived only in 
the hope of bringing her back to life, and because 
she wished that my hope should be left to me as. 
long as possible. I understood this one evening 
when we sat on a veranda gazing at a panorama 
of Norwegian fjords and mountains. Elsa looked 
at it for a long time. Then she closed her eyes to 
what she loved so much and looked away. 
“George,” she said, ‘“‘why do you let me see all 
this, George?’ She began to cry softly, but tried 
to still her tears as she looked up at me. “Why 


BOOK ABOUT LITTLE BROTHER 169 


do you do so much for me? Why are you so kind 
to me? It would be much better if you let me go. 
my own way.’ 

I felt myself face to face with a suffering that 
could not be measured or weighed. I felt remorse 
that I had tried to draw her away from her sorrow, 
and that I had let her become aware of my pur- 
pose. At that moment, any effort to lead her or 
to influence her grief seemed to me wretched and 
mean. I drew her close to me and said: “‘Cry in 
my arms! Cry to your heart’s content; Don’t re- 
strain yourself! Don’t you know that I grieve like 
you?”’. 

Tears streamed from her eyes, and yet the face 
she turned to me was as radiantly happy as if the 
greatest imaginable good fortune had befallen her. 
‘Do you really?” she said. 

The fact that my wife could believe that I al- 
ready had forgotten or was about to forget, shook — 
me so deeply that my grief found utterance, and 
I heard or saw nothing but what I myself felt, and 
what tortured me. I told her how impoverished 
and old our entire home seemed now that Sven was 
gone. I told her how I feared to return home and 
resume my everyday tasks knowing that his bright 
voice would not greet me or he himself stand 
hidden behind the door to meet me as I entered. I 
told her all this, and I could feel how she rested 
more and more peacefully against my shoulder. I 


170 BOOK ABOUT LITTLE BROTHER 


was happy in the consciousness of how much we 
still could feel in common. But I understood, too, 
that her fear of my not sharing her sorrow as she 
desired, sprang from the fact that, without any 
word from me, she guessed that all I planned 
or did, said or thought, became focused in a con- 
centrated effort to bring her back to life. 

I thought of this as we sat there. But from that 
evening my attitude toward my wife was changed, 
and I myself could notice the change. I became 
resigned and ceased to expect that she would 
quickly turn her thoughts from him who had gone 
away to us that remained behind. This made her 
more trustful and more frank toward me. But our 
journey slipped by as if all that we saw were noth- 
ing but illusion. We met friends, but no amount of 
sympathy could awaken more than gratitude in my 
wife. People seemed to slip away from us as if we 
had stood within a circle that no one willingly 
would enter. 

Such calm as lay within our reach we did not 
find until, one evening, we ‘moved into our new 
home. It was an apartment in Stockholm, for 
which we had exchanged the country home where 
we had experienced so much of good and evil. We 
had made the arrangements before we had any 
idea that what had now happened could possibly 
come to pass, and it was with a sense of fear that 
we entered our new rooms. 


BOOK ABOUT LITTLE BROTHER 141 


Nevertheless it was here we experienced our 
first days of relief and of peace in the midst of our 
grief. Times without number we regretted having 
ever left home, and thus, so to speak, exhibited 
our sorrow to public view. 


Chapter II . 


/ In the cemetery there is a little stone with this 
. inscription: ‘Our little Sven.” It stands on a 
‘mound rising beneath a linden tree that has long 
since lost its leaves. By the trunk of the tree stands 
a bench. On the bench sits a lonely woman in 
black, and her mourning is as deep as that of a 
widow. She sits there a long time in the autumnal 
light, talking to somebody that no one else can see. 
She orders the coachman waiting near the grave 

to drive back to the road. Then she bends down 
and gathers some mould from the grave in her 
handkerchief. Next she produces a piece of black 
silk, needle, thread, and scissors from a sewing 
bag. She cuts the silk and sews it together -in the 
form of a little bag. This she fills with mould. 
Then she presses her lips to the dark mould; and 
having done so, she sews the opening of the bag 
together. This:she does with close and careful 
stitches, so that not a grain may be lost, and to 
the corners of the bag she fastens strong cords. 
Then she puts away her sewing things and sits 
there a long time with the black amulet in her 
hand, thinking that now she is wedded to him that 


lies in the grave. | 
At last she kneels beneath the bare branches of 


BOOK ABOUT LITTLE BROTHER 173 


the linden and kisses the stone bearing her dar- 
ling’s name. Slowly and solemnly, as if performing 
a sacred rite in the full view of many people, she 
puts the cord about her neck, opens her dress, and 
places the sacred mould on her own breast. 

All this time her face is serious, but bright and 
happy. Before rising, she kisses the soil at her 
feet. Then she stops to survey the grave. A forest 
of potted plants bloom around it, and fresh flowers 
have been strewn on the mound. No grave is more 
beautiful, none better kept, none so richly deco- 
rated at this time when the fall winds shake the 
trees. $5 

She smiles with pleasure, and once more she 
speaks unheard and intimate words to somebody 
whom no one else can see. Then she makes*her 
way to the carriage waiting at the cemetery gate 
and drives home. 

But when she reaches home, she goes straight 
to me, takes out the black amulet, and tells me 
what it contains. She holds it up to me and asks 
me to kiss it. This I do in order not to disturb her 
pleasure, and with a happy smile she hides it again 
in her bosom, with the words, “If you knew how 
happy I feel when I am with Sven, you would never 
regret that I go so often. After I have been there, 

-[ am at peace for many days.”’ 
Then she goes out again, leaving me alone. 


174 BOOK ABOUT LITTLE BROTHER 


When, a couple of hours later, I am through with 
my work and look for her, I find her in front of 
Sven’s little chest of drawers, turning over the 
things that once belonged to him. 


Chapter III 


THUS her thoughts are constantly circling about 
him who is dead, and there is nothing that can 
deflect them. She talks of following him soon, and 
she does so in a quiet, rational, confidential tone, 
as if it ought to be a natural thing to others as well 
as to herself. Sometimes she adds: “I should only 
like to live until the boys are a little bigger and 
don’t need me any longer.” 

At such times her face takes on an expression of 
desperate agitation, as if she knew her wish to be 
beyond what she could hope or demand. Her fore- 
head becomes contracted into a deep furrow be- — 
tween her eyes, as if her brooding caused her pain. 
She feels that, in her desire at least, she must make 
a choice between life and death, and that she can- 
not do so. Therefore she wishes first to live a 
while, in order that she may do all she can for 
those that live. Then she wants to die in order to 
.stay with him to whom she feels that she belongs. 
She seeks a reconciliation between her wish to die 
and her need to live, and she fears both because 
the two desires struggle for mastery within her 
soul, and each in its own way brings her infinite 
torture. At the same time, however, she can fore- 
see which of the spirits must conquer in the end, 
and this she tells, not as something extraordinary 


176 BOOK ABOUT LITTLE BROTHER | 


that ought to call forth astonishment and awe, 
but as something natural which she has experienced 
and which no one can doubt. 

“Do you remember my saying that I didn’t be- 
lieve in another life?’ she asks. “It was you who 
gave me that idea.’’ Her face darkens as she 
speaks, and her voice carries a suggestion of re- 
sentment that hurts me. This she sees, and she 
puts her hand consolingly on mine as she goes on: 

“Now I believe in such a life. Now I know that 
you may begin to live it while still on earth. Let 
some one only pass away to whom you are at- 
tached, and you feel as if your soul had followed. 
Sven comes to me almost every night: He does not 
‘ come at my will, or when I ask him to come; nor 
when I cry, and yearn, and reach out my arms for 
him, and call his name. But when I least expect 
it, I see him sitting beside me. And if I remain 
very quiet and happy, then he smiles at me and 
looks pleased. He looks at me exactly as he used 


to do, and before I have time to pull myself to- — 


gether, he is gone. Yet I am happy afterwards. I 
know that he has been with me. He has come many 
times when you were sleeping and I lay awake. 
More than once I have thought of waking you. 
But I have never dared to do so. I was afraid that 
he might be gone when you waked up, and then 
perhaps you would not believe me when I told you 
what I had seen.”’ 


BOOK ABOUT LITTLE BROTHER 177 


All the time she looks at me timidly, as if afraid 
that I might contradict her. This I never do. I 
don’t know myself what I believe. I have passed 
through disturbances so terrible that I dare not 
say what may be reality, and what illusion, in the 
experiences of other people. Can I even know it 
about my own? How do I know that only what 
my reason can grasp is real? Is it not conceivable 
that there may be a reality which can be produced 
only by our emotions, or—why not—by our 





imaginations? It seems as if I were mutilating .\ 


myself by making my emotion and my imagination 
exist only to be subjugated by reason. The analogy 
occurs to me of letting my eye deny a physical pain 
because it is invisible, or of letting my ear ques- 
tion the sensations of taste because they cannot be 
heard. And no matter how well I know the argu- 
ments advanced against such a course of thought, . 
I find it impossible to apply them to the present 
case. I neither believe nor disbelieve. I seem to 
be walking about. in a distressing expectation of 
light to come on something I don’t know. | 

In the meantime a thought is growing that has 
sprouted ever since I knew that my child must die. 
I understand that, no matter whether this be imag- 
ination or reality, it must sooner or later rob me . 
of my wife. She has.grown to be a part of my own 
life, and I cannot lose her. Arrayed against my 
own happiness— which once upon a time seemed 


178 BOOK ABOUT LITTLE BROTHER 


so strong that from its height I could look down 
upon the happiness of others—stands the force 
that is the fate of all living things. Death appears 
to me as once it did to little Sven on the picture 
which furnished the subject of a much cherished 
fairy tale. He rings his bell and calls the one that 
ought to stay, but leaves the one that is not called. 
, The difference is merely that I see Death far ahead 
and long before he can arrive—that I know his 
bell must ring, and that she for whom it rings will 
go gladly. 

But I will not be left alone to curse the power of 
death. Within me grows a desire mounting farther 
than I know. It is the same desire that caused my 
wife to say, when crushed down by the certainty 
of her child’s death, “He will not die. He must 
not die. I know that he will not die.” 

In the same fashion I now say to myself, “I 
-won’t have it. I don’t want to lose her. She must 
live —in spite of all.” 

I don’t realize that I am attempting the impos- 
sible. My critical faculty, so alert in regard to her, 
sleeps when I myself am concerned. I will fight 
death in order to keep her and my happiness as it 
once flourished, not when life was nothing but 
. smiles, but when we had taken its chastisement and 
yet knew that it could smile. I will do anything to 
win her back. As Orpheus descended to the realm 
of the dead, so I will use my love to compel her 


BOOK ABOUT LITTLE BROTHER 179 


return, and if she follow, I wpa never turn to ogle 
the shades. 

Those are the promises I make to myself, and 
I don’t expect the reward to come quickly. On the 
contrary, I prepare for a long and hard ordeal, 
and I know in advance that the first thing I need 
is the art of waiting. 

But my faith is so firm that I almost smile to 
myself when J hear her speak of death. I hear her 
say that she is longing to leave, and I feel her 
endearments when she asks me to forgive her. I 
rejoice in her caresses and forget her words. I feel 
it as a tremendous, infinite certitude, that the vic- 
tory is irrevocably mine, and not his who is sleep- 
ing under the sod. In my thoughts, I make him my 
ally. Entering into her own course of thought, I 
even tell her that she must live because Sven wishes 
her to live—that, indeed, he has whispered this 
into my ear while I slept. 

She listens to me with wondering, glistening 
eyes, and long afterwards— so long that I, for a 
while, cannot recall what I said — she tells me that 
Sven sat on the edge of her bed, dressed in his new 
white suit with the blue scarf, and said, ‘Mamma 
must not cry so much for me. My head aches so 
when mamma cries.” 

I listen to her words and seize upon them as an 
omen. More hopeful than ever, I dream of a 
‘future when our dead child will prove a stronger 


18 BOOK ABOUT LITTLE BROTHER 


bond of unity than if he had lived, and with tears 
in my eyes I recall the words she herself once 
taught me, “To grow old together.” 


Chapter IV 


WHAT Lhad begun upon was nothing less than 
a battle with death, and the time that ensued be- 
came a constant alternation between darkest 
despair and brightest hope. Of course, the most 
dificult thing of all under such circumstances is 
to maintain the complete passivity that consists in 
waiting patiently for what may come and leaving 
everything to time, while simultaneously one has 
the feeling that whatever happens merely serves 
to hasten the arrival of a night one has hoped to 
repel. How anxiously I watched my wife during 
this period! How I followed her visits to the 
_ grave! And how I rejoiced when I saw her calmly 
and gaily gather the boys about her to read and 
tell tales for them as she alone could, so that once . 
more I heard their voices mingled in merriment 
as the reading called out some of those funny com- 
mentaries that make it a feast to read aloud to 
children. And how I watched, at the dinner-table 
or in the light of the evening lamp, for that 
strained, preoccupied expression on my wife’s face 
that came like a cloud and struck us all with 
dumbness. | 

At such moments it seemed as if her soul had 
suddenly taken flight and left us to ourselves. The 
boys exchanged glances with me— glances which 
plainly revealed that, as far as their age per- 


182 BOOK ABOUT LITTLE BROTHER 


mitted, they understood no less than I, and that 
they suffered, too, although it might be easier for 
them to forget such thoughts. Svante would get 
up and pat his mother, and he didn’t give in be- 
cause he couldn’t bring the light back to her eyes. 
Afterwards he would come to me at times, and 
say, ‘I am so sorry for mamma.” 

That was all he thought of, and for that reason, 
perhaps, he was a better comforter than I. 

Olof kept more quiet on such occasions, and 
tried to talk with me as if everything were all 
right. But his eyes were on his mother, and if she 
went away to be alone, as often happened when 
she became aware of her inability to look at us 
and talk to us, then he would steal up to her door 
and stand there a long while listening. If the 
silence lasted too long, he would enter her room 
softly, and if repulsed, as sometimes happened, he 
came back and sat down with an air of resigna- 
tion, as if knowing that he could not ask every- 
thing at once. 

He was in the same situation as I. He would 
have felt it a great relief if he had only known 
what to do. 

At such moments, when we three sat by our- 
selves, we would all think of what was happening 
behind that closed door, where my wife, in her 
struggle to attain death, was working her way 
closer and closer to the border line of life. 


BOOK ABOUT LITTLE BROTHER 183. 


“Do you know the cause of mamma’s trouble ?”’ 
I asked, one day. 

Olof looked away in silence. Svante answered, 
UVeg 

My question was needless, for that matter, as 
I knew she had prepared their minds for what 
must come. 


Chapter V 


to dispel my thoughts, and to be able to do any- 
thing at all, I used often at night, when I was 
alone, to write a sort of diary, which I kept hidden 
at the bottom of a drawer in my writing-desk, so 
that no mishap might bring it to Elsa’s attention. 

Now I have read it over, and what that diary 
contains seems to be written so long ago that I find 
it hard to believe that less than two years have 
passed since then. As I read, all that happened is 
revived and brought near to me again, and once 
more I feel the torment of the fearful illusion that 
supported me then. 


DIARY 


| | September 4. 

I sit here thinking of little Sven. Everything is 
silent around me, and I seem to see him as, during 
the last days before he was put to bed, he walked 
about the paths of the garden with his loving little 
hand in mine, talking all the time and looking up at 
my face with his pensive: child-eyes. The more I 
bury myself in this memory, the more unspeakably 
bitter becomes the hopelessness of never seeing 
him again. Without knowing it, he was the centre 
of our home. It was he who always came running 
to meet-us and filled the place with his chirp when 
any one of us four returned home. It was about 


BOOK ABOUT LITTLE BROTHER 185 


him we gathered to watch his impressions of any 
little thing that brought him pleasure: Now his 
father must harden himself against that memory, 
lest his strength fail in keeping everything else 
going. Must not even think too much. Nor 
mourn. Lest all go to smash. 

Did he come merely to take his mother away 
and to leave the rest of us mourning? Or did he 
come in order to pass out as quietly and beautifully 
as he did, so that through his death we might 
learn the great art of living? , 
October 16. 

I have considered everything, and seen through 
everything, and now I know the issue of the battle. 
Day by day I have seen things growing worse. 
And there is no pleasure in comprehending. It is 
agony. I have watched every detail during this 
time, and a word or a glance has sufficed to set my 
whole body trembling, because I knew what it 
meant. In the presence of myself and my boys, I 
have seen her forget us in order to hold converse 
with some invisible being. I have strained every 
nerve to the utmost in order to wring from her 
eyes a glance that showed her consciousness of 
not being alone. I have seen her feel and grasp 
everything herself —have seen that she foresaw 
and knew what was lurking within her. She has 
thrown herself at my feet in anguish, begging me 
not to send her away, but to have a little patience. 


186 BOOK ABOUT LITTLE BROTHER 


I suffer frightfully from watching this struggle. 
And yet I know in the midst of it, that what now 
racks me is merely another aspect of the very quali- 
ties in a rich and majestic nature whose waves run 
high as those of the sea—the very qualities that 
once brought me life’s entire happiness and joy. 


October 30. 


_ The awful tension is decreasing. My wife is 
improving daily. The darkness of winter must 
some time be followed by longer days and brighter 


Hours. December 8. 

I have not touched my diary for a long time. 
The reason is that I have been working. I have 
written a play, and a queer experience it has been. 

In spite of proof-reading and other occupations 
of various kinds, in spite of my wife’s illness and 
a nervousness that has made my whole being tense 
as a bow-string, I have risen early in the morning 
to steal time for writing. Night after night I have 
written until two o'clock. I have used whiskey to 
keep myself awake. In the midst of this work, I 
have supped out for the sake of the noise and to 
see human faces, to plunge into fevered living, to 
feel it pulse about me and scorch my temples. 

The play is ready, and all I feel is a great lassi- 
tude. Indeed, what I strive for now is neither 
glory nor the joy of creation. I feel as if my brain 
alone had life, at the expense of the rest of my 


BOOK ABOUT LITTLE BROTHER 187 


body. It is too bad that the hours of the day are 
so few when one is trying to reach the unattainable. , 
, | December 17. 

Without clearly knowing how, I have the im- 
pression that, in some mysterious way, all I have 
- lived and now live, all I have been and am, is pro- 
gressing toward a wonderful consummation that 
will take place without my being able to move a 
finger. In the meantime I am living my customary 
life, and I don’t think anybody finds me changed. 
I am happy and even jolly, when I get out and meet 
people. That’s a solace. 

But here is my real home, where I live my real 
life. And constantly I feel here as if she and I 
were being gradually overtaken by something 
which I once, in another connection, spoke of as 
being ‘‘greater than fortune or misfortune’ — 
something that has no name at all. 

My wife is at the heart of all this, of course. I 
don’t know whether she is tending toward health 
or destruction. It seems to me a matter in which 
I cannot meddle. It seems to me at times as if I 
were beyond it, as if I had no share in it and could 
get none, as if I could never reach it. And all this 
contains no element of exaltation. It is nothing 
but a resigned and profoundly colorless yearning. 

January 25. 

To-day my wife sat down at the piano for the 

first time. She cannot sing yet, but once more [| 


188 BOOK ABOUT. LITTLE BROTHER 


have heard music in our home, and the melodies 
from by-gone days have given a new and brighter 
tone to our minds. Altogether, something new has 
come over her lately, something that seems more 
promising. She has waked up to life, and she is 
with us as she used to be —or not quite, perhaps. 
But I feel her coming nearer to us every day. 
Sometimes I believe her when she declares the rea- 
son of it all to be that she knows she must soon’ 
pass away, and that this hope supports her. But 
sometimes I think that, even if now it be as she 
says, all this is on the verge of a transition into 
something greater, which she herself perceives 
with bewilderment and anxiety, but in which she 
refuses to believe. 

The truth of it all I don’t know. But I do know 
that I have lost my former sense of desperation. 
Now I am living under a fate which is my own, and 
which, no matter what may happen—as I see it 
now —cannot touch my life and hers with malice. 
This is what I feared before. 

February 19. 

I cannot bear it any longer. Wherever I turn 
my eyes, there is nothing but black, black, black, so 
that I cannot look at myself in a mirror without 
becoming enraged. Fortunately, however, my wife 
seems to be coming to understand a little of what 


I feel. 


” 


BOOK ABOUT LITTLE BROTHER 189 


March 26. 

My time is spent waiting for the winter to dis- 
appear in earnest, so that we may get away from 
here. A very peculiar sort of apathy possesses me, 
and there are times when I fear that this winter 
has finished me. Perhaps what the summer brings 
may not be worth waiting for either. We moved 
to Stockholm, or rather, we rented an apartment 
here, when we thought that this might help us 
along, however slowly. As it is, it would have 
been better for us to stay in the country, with the 
isolation that seems our better choice. We are 
more lonely here than there. 

Sorrow arouses fear. 

May 31. 

This is our wedding anniversary. Im wunder- 
schoénen Monat Mai. I cannot forbear to note 
down a little thing, however childish it may seem 
even to myself. We have been married fourteen | 
years to-day, and the year just ended was the worst 
of all. It was the thirteenth—the unlucky year 
par préférence. Now I incline to believe that some 
one or something is about to make our path 
smoother, or I feel as if something within me were 
about to heal. And this for no better reason than 
that I happened to note a numeral which, under 
normal circumstances, would probably have passed 
me by unnoticed. | 


a nent he 


190 BOOK ABOUT LITTLE BROTHER 


June 25. 
The days slip by while I go about thinking that 
I ought to start work. But the butterflies of imagi- 
nation flutter restlessly above something that lies 
deserted and ruined. At times it seems as if I 
might follow their flight. Then reality calls me 
back to what is, and the effect is like that of blow- 


\ ing out a candle in a room at night. 


If I could merely act so that there was nothing 
for my wife to notice. If I could keep an even 
temper, or even put on an appearance of happi- 
ness. But I cannot, and I know that she is sad- 
dened, not only by her. own fate, but by the grief 
she is causing me. It must be horrible to be in her 
state, having strength for nothing, will for noth- 
ing, and collapsing before the slightest sign of 
trouble or sorrow; to go about brooding over a 


: death which she believes near, but which does not 


arrive. It must be thrice horrible, under such cir- 
cumstances, to inflict incurable misery on the per- 
son one loves most of all, and to have no power of 
relieving it. 

At times, when she thinks herself unnoticed, she 
sits looking at me, and then her face takes on such 
an-expression of despair that it cuts me to the very 
soul. 

Yesterday she sat down beside me and put her 
hand on mine. “If you didn’t have me,” she said, 
“how much happier you would be.” 


BOOK ABOUT LITTLE BROTHER 191 


I know that she believed in the truth of her own 
words. My reply might shake this belief for a 
moment-and lure a glimmer of hope into her eyes, 
but it could not bring back her conviction of being 
indispensable and of having to live on that account. 


Chapter VI 


As I scan these pages and observe my own vacil- 
lation between hope and fear, I cannot understand 
how what I have written really can be true. And 
yet it must be, for scripta manent. And however 
incomplete and fragmentary these notes may be, 
they show nevertheless with perfect certainty, that 
my hopes then were beyond what I can grasp now, 
when everything is explained and ended. 

This much I understand, that during the winter 
in question, to the memories of which I cannot and 
will not return any more, it was my fortune to have 

-found something at last which I thought might 


help to save my wife. What a fortune such a dis- | 


covery is! To escape being a mere spectator; to 
be allowed to participate; to be allowed to act, to 
work with a definite purpose in mind —a purpose 
believed at least to be attainable. In youth such 
a source of happiness may seem poor and humble. 


But when the years have put a little grey into one’s | 


hair, one grows content with much less than before. 
Then one may endure living and suffering if one 
only hopes that an improvement lies within the 
limits of possibility; and in the mere consciousness 
of such .a possibility one may a something 
approaching happiness. 

This help came to me at the very moment when 


BOOK ABOUT LITTLE BROTHER 193 


a long nourished suspicion that city life was injuri- 
ous to my wife’s condition had ripened into genuine 
conviction, and when, at last, this conviction had 
produced a determination to take her out of the 
city and back to the country, which we never should 

have left. Our physician encouraged me in this 
~ decision; and when, for the first time, I mentioned 
this project to my wife as a mere possibility, her 
whole face lighted up as if I had promised her the 
joys of paradise, and she said, ‘‘Can you do that 
for me? Will you really?” 

These words aroused me to life and activity. 
Through all my misgivings, all my worry, all that 
I have set forth here as crushing me to the ground, 
these words shone before me as stars out of the - 
darkness, and it was they that goaded me to the 
great effort which I hoped would bring joy back 
into our home. The more | thought of it, the more 
‘likely it seemed that I had found the ‘Open 
Sesame’’ that would clear the path for my wife so | 
that once more she might belong to life. Like a 
man who believes that he has found a talisman 
giving him the power to perform miracles, I staked 
my entire faith on this plan. And when finally we 
moved into the little villa that stood on a hill, with 
a wide view of woods and water, and with the 
leaves of aspens trembling beneath the windows 
where my wife could sit watching for me as I re- 
turned from my work, then I felt sure of having 


194 BOOK ABOUT LITTLE BROTHER 


found a solution. Strange as it seems to me now, I 
really felt sure of it. I believed, and that belief 
made me unspeakably happy. 

Nor have I ever felt more hopefully contented 
than when the snow began to fall this winter, and 
when we experienced the homelike feeling of being 
shut off from everybody and everything, which is 
so characteristic of the northern clime. Our new 
home stood ready from attic to cellar, and my wife 
walked among us as in the old days, arranging 
everything and decorating the rooms with all the 
little tricks and knick-knacks which women know 
how to produce as if by magic. The loud voices” 
of our boys resounded once more through the 
rooms, and there was no reason to silence them. 
The canaries sang and trilled without having their 
cage covered up by the green night cloth. The 
bark of Poodle accompanied the indoor playing 
and romping of the boys. And the piano was no 
longer closed. 

It was opened one evening when I least expected 
it. Without a word of her intention, Elsa went 
into the drawing-room and sat down at the piano. 
As she passed me, she gave me a glance that made 
me understand how happy she felt at being able to 
follow her inclination. After Sven’s death, when 
my wife no longer could hear his clear voice min- 
gling with the notes from the piano, she had never 
cared to sing the songs to which he alone so often 


BOOK ABOUT LITTLE BROTHER 195 


used to listen. I hardly believed my own senses 
when I saw her sit down in front of the piano and 
heard her strike a note. A moment later Grieg’s 
Swan sounded through the rooms: 


My swan, my Swanwhite, 
So still and so silent; 

Not a trill, not a carol 
Betrayed the singer. 


And then the end: 


In floods of music 

Thy life expired. 

Thou sangest dying — 
The swan thus revealing. 

At no other time, before or after, have I heard 
this air sung more effectively. While she sang, the 
boys came in softly, one after the other, and 
stopped silently by the door. They looked in won- 
der at me, as if they could not trust their senses, — 
either, and I nodded in response, while my eyes 
grew dim. When the last note had died away, the 
room was very quiet, but it was the solemn quiet 
of a sacred observance. 

My wife rose and closed the piano. “That’s all 
I can sing to-day,’”’ she said, as if apologizing. 

Then she looked at us and understood what 
pleasure she had conferred. Her face lighted up. 

Passing me, she went over to the boys, took one 
on either side of herself and placed their heads 
against her shoulders. ‘Be grateful to Little 


196 BOOK ABOUT LITTLE BROTHER 


Brother,” she said. ‘It is he who has helped me.” 

Her words were free from the usual morbidity. 
She spoke without the almost hostile tone she used 
when it seemed to her as if we, the living ones, 
prevented her from joining him who was dead. 
She spoke tenderly, calmly, and almost joyously, | 
with an expression as if bidding farewell to a past 
that would never return. 


Chapter VII | 
O PENING from our bedroom there was a little 


room originally meant for a dressing-room, but 
which, for some reason, had remained unfur- - 
nished. It was irregular in shape. Its only window 
.was set higher than usual, and it had less esti than 
the other rooms. 

There dwelt little Sven. It was his room, and 
that room was locked. 

No one was permitted to help my wife arrange 
this room or keep it clean. She wished to do every- 
thing herself. She put light-colored curtains in 
front of the little dormer-window. In the recess, 
behind the curtain, she placed a table. For this 
table she sewed a cloth out of the same material as 
the curtains, and on top of it she placed Sven’s toys. 
There was a horse harnessed to a wagon, a few 
tin soldiers, and a little tent. There was Sven's 
white cup with a gilded border, his savings-bank, 
his little sword and helmet. There was everything 
he left behind, the sum of what he had owned 
when alive. Under the table stood two wooden 
horses, one of which had lost its mane, while in — 
front of it was placed a little low wooden chair 
which had been given to Sven as a present, and 
which he used to drag around the rooms with him 
when he felt very friendly and happy, and wanted 


198 BOOK ABOUT LITTLE BROTHER 


b Wipe ene 


to tease mamma into telling him some fairy-tales. 
In the midst of these toys stood framed por- 
traits of various sizes, and others were hung on 


the walls as near the light as possible. Among 


them were portraits of papa and mamma, of the 
elder boys, and of the whole family. There was a 
portrait of Sven in a long dress, and another one 
of Sven in his little fur coat, in which he leaned 
against a bench and grinned at the sunlight spar- 
kling on the snow. But all these portraits dated 
back to our time of youth and happiness, when 
nothing had yet occurred that might sever the 
bonds uniting all of us. On a projecting part of 
the wall, all by itself, hung the reproduction of 
Spangenberg’s picture of death, over which little 
Sven brooded so often after mamma had told him 
its story, long before the day when he himself 
learned more about it than any grown-up person 
could tell. | | 

One more object was there. It was a little chest 
of drawers in dark finish which had been given to 
Sven. It had its own little story, for long ago it 
used to belong to papa himself. Then it was a 
bright yellow. Later it passed through many vicis- 
situdes, and finally, on becoming Sven’s it was 
re-painted. Its three drawers held all those me- 
mentos of the little one that could not be left 
about. There lay his last shirt and the last pair of 
socks he used: There lay his little song books that 


BOOK ABOUT LITTLE BROTHER 199 


were no longer permitted to appear on the music 
stand in the drawing-room. There were hidden his 
last white dress with its pretty blue scarf and his 
white cap with a bow of the same color. There lay 
his little brown shoes and his books. There lay 
also papa’s own book about the big boys, in 
mamma’s special copy, which Sven begged of her 
when he wanted papa to write a book “about 
Nenne only.” 

This was Sven’s room and Elsa’s sanctuary. She 
went there every evening, and every morning she 
sat there a while before she spoke to anybody else. 
She was never more happy than when I, too, paid 
it a visit and stayed there a while. 

There dwelt Sven, and what converse was held 
within its walls, no one knows. Even when Elsa 
told me something, the words she used were as 
nothing compared with those that passed between 
her and the invisible world in that room. 

“You don’t believe in all this,” she said to me 
one day. “But I can feel it.” | 

“How do you know that I don’t believe?” I 
rejoined. | 

She gazed at me with large, puzzled eyes. ‘You 
cannot believe as I do,” she said, ‘‘because at the 
same time you wonder if it can be possible. I 
know, and I have ceased to wonder.”’ 

A memory recurred to me—the memory of a 
moment when she reproached me for having taken 


200 BOOK ABOUT LITTLE BROTHER 


away her belief in the reality of the infinite. I 
understood that she needed her present faith; that 
she always had needed it; that it pertained so 
deeply and fully to her innermost soul that prob- 
ably she would have been spared many of her suf- 
ferings if this faith had never been disturbed. At 
the same time I realized that I myself had never 
quite dismissed the belief in a life after death. I 
had criticized and scrutinized; in fact, I had even 
striven to make this idea impossible in my own 
eyes. But I seemed to have done so largely in the 
hope that my search itself in the end would bring 
me a certainty of the opposite kind. This certainty 
had never come, but with the passing years my 
thoughts of the hereafter had undergone a change. 
Of course, the idea of immortality remained to me 
nothing but a possibility, but more and more it had 
assumed the form of something kindly and gentle, 
toward which I drew nearer without exactly know- 
ing why. Step by step, I had come to realize the 
possibility of such a conviction growing up within 
me, and my experiences during the past year had 
brought my emotion closer to this possibility, 
which my reason still could neither accept nor 
reject. eee. : 

All the time, however, I seemed to stand alone _ 
in this matter, as if my wife neither could nor 
would see what was happening within me. And 
when she spoke those words to me — “‘at the same 


BOOK ABOUT-LITTLE BROTHER 201 


time you wonder if it can be possible’’—I was 
struck by the misunderstanding they showed, as I 
had said nothing at all. What was it that kept me 
silent on this subject? What made me forget that — 
what I had to say about this matter undoubtedly 
would fill her with intense happiness? I wished 
immediately to make up for my supposed derelic- 
tion, and for this purpose I reminded her of the 
day when she said that she wished to believe as | 
did, think as I did, live as I did. 

“T want you to know it once for all,” I said. 
‘Years have passed since then. But I have never . 
asked anything like that of you. I have never 
asked you to change anything within yourself for 
my sake. That thought came from your own love, 
and not from me.” 

She stood and gazed as if trying to ponder 
something that lay very far back. “I thought you 
wished me to become like yourself,” she said. 

“Never,” I replied. “Never have I wished any- 
thing of the kind. I wished to be able. to tell you 
what I thought and felt. But I wanted you to do 
the same with me. And I have regretted that you 
didn’t.” I saw that there was something in all this 
that hurt her more than words could express. But 
I could not guess what it was. 

“T have always believed that you wished me to 
be like yourself,” she said. “I have thought so, . 
and I have said it to other people as well. When 


202 BOOK ABOUT LITTLE BROTHER 


I believed it impossible to talk with you, I talked 
with strangers.”’ 

The last words were spoken in a tone as if they 
expressed something unconquerably repulsive, of 
which she felt ashamed. ‘‘How was it possible for 
me to mistake you so utterly?” she added. Putting 
her arm about my shoulder, she looked into my 
eyes and asked, ‘‘You will not be sorry ace I go 
to join Sven, will you?” 

“Sorry ?” I must have looked at her mitts an 
expression of surprise that could not be miscon- 
. strued, for she asked no more questions. .Without 
a word she turned from me and went into Sven’s 
little room. There she stayed a long time, and 
when she came out, I could see that she had wept, 
but not in sorrow. 

While sitting alone, waiting for her, it occurred 
‘to me that never before in my presence had she 
opened the door of the little room and entered to 
worship. At the same time I knew that, since the 
death of Sven, I had never been closer to her than 
I was now. 


Chapter VIII 


W HY could not this state of affairs continue as 
it began? Why must the thing I never feared grow 
into a more serious menace against me and my 
dearest than the thing I feared had ever been? 
You may as well ask why everything does not 
happen in accordance with man’s desire; or why it 
is not within his power to steer the course of his 
life in accordance with his own will. 

In spite of our mutual devotion and understand- 
ing, there was something between. my wife and 
myself during this time that kept us apart. It was 
not a question of any theoretical difference of 
opinion. Nor was it such as to prevent us from 
constantly meeting, constantly seeking each other 
out, constantly taking pleasure in each other’s 
company. It was simply a difference in our atti- 
tudes toward everything that happened to us or 
passed between us at this time. To her everything 
was a farewell, in the course of which she came 
nearer and nearer crossing the border whence no 
one returns. To me it seemed so many promises 
that our common life should begin over again, 
that my wife should return to me, to all of us, to 
life itself. 

From what happened — much of which seemed 
obscure and inexplicable at the time — I have come 


204 BOOK ABOUT LITTLE BROTHER 


to understand that here lay the fundamental ex- 
planation of her fate and mine, the whole explana- 
tion of what had happened and what must happen. 
/And I understand, too, that I was saved from 
‘desperation merely by my failure to grasp this 
fact as clearly as I do now. I, on my side, asked 
- that my wife should abandon her thoughts of 
death and, for my sake, resume the road through 
life on which she had halted, as if paralyzed, ever 
since Sven died. She, on her side, desired me to 
recognize that she had irrevocably taken the first 
step into the hereafter when her angel, as she 
called him, passed away. She wished my grasp of 
this fact to be so profound that I should make it 
my sole mission to walk by her side as a friend, 
holding her hand in sympathetic contemplation of 
the impending darkness that she herself was seek- 
ing. We loved each other so deeply that neither 
one could surrender the dream of harmonizing the 
other’s thoughts with his own. For this reason 
neither one could let the other go his own way in 
resigned acceptance of life’s portion, that portion 
called life in loneliness. For this reason neither 
one could escape a feeling of bitterness on seeing 
his hope deceived. For this reason she suffered 
from my striving to lead her whither she would 
not go, as I suffered from her resistance. And for 
this reason our entire life became, in the full sense 
of the term, a life and death struggle for love. 


BOOK ABOUT LITTLE BROTHER 205 


I had lived so long under the shadow of death 
that I had ceased to regard any other situation as 
possible. I had grown familiar with it as a chronic 
invalid becomes familiar with his pains. The 
shadow was cast upon me not only by the little one 
who had gone away, but also by her who wished 
to follow him. It sprang not only from what lay 
behind us. It waited for us, as well, in what still 
lay ahead of us, but must come. These two shad- 
ows met at the point of life’s road we had just 
reached. These two shadows enclosed my whole 
life, and my only fault was that I had not the 
power to tear the sun out of the sky in order to 
dispel the second shadow. 

It was my fault and my illusion. With seeing 
eyes, I failed to see. With open ears, I failed to 
hear. I saw nothing but my own desire, heard 
nothing but my own dream’s passionate longing 
for life. And yet I knew that it is only in fairy- 
tales a man’s will suffices to bring the dead back to 
life. Even the fairy-tale presents him as offending 
the gods by attempting the superhuman; and in the 
realm of shadows he is made to look back in order 
that she, for whose sake he attempted the impos- 
sible, may be restored forever to the night of 
Orcus. 


Chapter IX 


SPRING came late this year. In fact, it seemed 
as if spring, to which I looked as a liberator and a 
bearer of joy, would not come at all. The ground 
lay cold and hard. An icy blast swayed the bare 
branches of the trees outside our windows. Masses 
of snow poured down as late as the end of April. 
And when the sun shone for once, it brought a 
northern wind fraught with the icy air of the 
frozen Bay of Bothnia. : 

At this time a cold contributed in bringing my 
wife back to bed. She was kept in bed for weeks, 
and during those weeks we feared the worst. Once 
more silence reigned in our rooms. Once more the 
boys and I ate our meals in silence at a table where 
her chair stood vacant. Once more every sound 
was suppressed within the house. Once more ill- 
ness struck our hopes dumb. 

Contrary to all expectations, my wife recovered. 
Her convalescence was slow, and she had little 
strength. This new awakening to life, so unex- 
pected by all, seemed beyond description strange. 
Yet it was a reality, and when I sat alone in my 
work-room on the ground floor, the whole house 
being at rest, I could resume my dreaming of 
dreams about the summer. 

More wonderful than that: soon I was not alone 


BOOK ABOUT LITTLE BROTHER 207 


in dreaming them. As if her recovery from this 
last illness implied more than a mere return to 
physical health, we now lived through a period 
that seemed to bring into harmony all that had 
been. My wife began to share my dreams. She 
began to long once more for a life in common with 
me. She went farther to meet me than she had 
done since the day we buried Sven. She still was 
ill and feeble, and she could not talk much. But 
she could grasp what I said to her. She knew that 
spring had arrived, and she rejoiced in the spring 
flowers placed on the table beside her bed. 

“How happy we used to be, George,” she said. 
‘‘How happy we used to be!” 

There was a note of acute pain in these words 
that she barely managed to utter. She closed her 
eyes as she spoke, and tears dripped from beneath 
her eyelids. 

“We'll be just as happy again,” I said. I be- 
lieved what I said, and I took her answer as a 
promise. | 

“Yes, yes,” she said, quickly. ‘‘When it’s 
summer.” | 

She listened to my tales about things that had 
gladdened our youth, and about the islands outside 
Stockholm, which had always given us our best 
homes. “We'll go out rowing among the islands,” 
she said, ‘‘and we'll sail in the night wind.” 

Then she broke out, as if disturbed by painful 


208 BOOK ABOUT LITTLE BROTHER 


memories: “You must forget, and never recall, 
what I have said to you during these last years. I 
have been so peculiar that I have not understood 
myself. Often, often it has been as if some other 
person were speaking through my mouth, and I 
could do nothing to prevent it. You have had to 
do everything, and I have merely accepted. There 
will be a change in that. If I only get well.” 

I silenced her and asked her not to talk too 
much—being too happy to say anything more 
myself. 

“Yes, yes,” she said. “I have been silent with 
you and talked to others. And what are they? 
Strangers who understand nothing.” 

She closed her eyes and began to doze. I re- 
mained in silence by her bed, looking at her as her 
sleep deepened. The look of her face had become 
the same again as when she was little more than 
a girl and I woke up the first time to watch her 
\ sleep. Tears of joy dropped heavily from my eyes, 
and I felt my own heart thawing while the April 
blizzard raged over the frozen ground outside. 


Chapter X 


My wife was up at last and convalescing. Once 
more she moved among us, her one thought being 
to make the rest of us happy, and to feel our hap- 
piness at her return to life. 

Oh, how well I remember those briet weeks, 
during which no one saw her but we! How suc- 
cessful they were in making me forget the past! 
In comparison with their speechless happiness, all 
our previously experienced worry and_ sorrow 
counted for nothing. Every word that was spoken 
has been written down in my memory and pre- 
served. All the unsaid things, surpassing what life 
generally has to offer, are now slumbering in my 
soul, where they provide the fundamental note of 
a life I could not have lived at all without them. 
The days that followed wiped out all there was 
within me of worry, doubt, and distrust. Yes, I 
had distrusted her, distrusted her love, because 
she would not let herself be led away from death 
in order to live with me. 

Now all her resistance was gone. I could feel it 
every moment I sat beside her, in every word she 
spoke to me. It was as if the illness had set her 
house in order within her, as if she had returned 
purged and purified by its agency. Her entire per- 
sonality returned, and I could sit for hours enjoy- 


210 BOOK ABOUT LITTLE BROTHER 


ing the sight of her face because it was the same as 
it used to be. 

“Do you recall when I told you that we must 
part?” she said one day. 

I had to think hard in order to remember that 
she had ever said anything of the kind. When I 
did remember finally, I told her that I had for- 
gotten her words as you forget the talk of a fever 
patient. 

“T meant what I said,” she insisted, eagerly. 
“Tt seemed as if you were trying to force me into 
something. And I felt so sorry for you at the same 
time. You have had such a hard time of it—much 
harder than I. But you must understand that I 
have been. very ill — far too ill to think of any one 
but myself. Oh, now it is as if I had waked again.” 

She took hold of her own head with a gesture of 
mingled anxiety and bliss. Then she added: 
‘When I die some time, you must look in Sven’s 
chest. There, in the upper drawer, lies a letter I 
have written. But you must not read it until then. 
I know anyhow that I shall die soon, and when I 
die, I shall die just as Sven did.” 

Many a time I had heard her utter such words, 
and every time they sent a shiver through my 
innermost soul. Now they passed me by as if they 
had never been spoken. I looked upon them as the 
last echoes of the storm—as corresponding to 
that steady heaving of the bosom of the sea that 


BOOK ABOUT LITTLE BROTHER 211 


remains when the tumult is over. I smiled in tri- 
umphant consciousness of having won her back. 
Turning her face toward mine and looking straight 
into her eyes, I said, “But now you wish to live?”’ 

“Yes,” she said. “I wish to live for you and the 
boys, and for the memory of Sven.” 

That day she walked at my arm along the grav- 
elled path in front of the villa. Her gait was tired 
and unsteady, and she rested heavily on my arm. 
But we were contented as two children, and she 
laughed at herself because her walk was so un- 
steady that her legs threatened to give way at 
every step. She laughed a little feeble laugh, that 
nevertheless was fervently happy and made me 
rejoice more than ever in supporting her. 

“How happy I am again, George,” she said, as 
we returned indoors. ‘‘And so you will be, too.”’ 

Then I helped her up the stairs. But she must 
have a look at the boys’ room before she entered 
‘her own. She stood a long while looking at every- 
thing as if it had grown new to her during the time 
she was ill. “It must have been a hard time for 
them, too,” she said. ‘I have not had strength for 
anything. But now I am going to be well.” 

The nurse helped her to bed. When the boys 
returned from their playground, she called to them 
in a feeble, thin voice, so different from her ordi- 
nary deep and rich voice, asking them to come in 
and tell her what they had been doing and what 


212 BOOK ABOUT LITTLE BROTHER 3 
fun they had had. This they did so thoroughly that 


more than once I tried to interrupt them. But she 
would not let me. While they were chattering both 
at once, she lay gazing at their faces all the time, 
and listening to their words, as if she needed time © 
to grasp that what she experienced just then was 
reality and not a delusion. Then she made them 
come up and kiss her good-night. 

“Now I shall soon be well,’ she said. ‘And 
when summer comes, papa will get us a place out 
there on the islands. I don’t need to look it over, 
or even know where it is, for he always orders 
things so nicely for us all.” 

She closed her eyes with a happy little smile and 
curled up in the bed to go to sleep. When I had . 
seen the boys to their own room, I put on my coat 
and walked by myself up and down the gravel 
path where my wife and I had been walking a little 

| while earlier. It was a calm and clear spring eve- 
sy ning with a suggestion of night frost in the air. 


Chapter XI 


WITHOUT quite knowing why or how, | 
seemed frequently inclined during these days to 
think of Elsa’s and my journey to the west coast. 
These thoughts brought back the memory of my 
silent struggle to make her love what I loved, and 
I was both inspired and disturbed by the recollec- 
tion of how I had succeeded and failed at the same 
time. 

I recalled that journey when, during the days 
of convalescence, I sat with my wife’s hand in 
mine and her head resting on my shoulder. 

“It is strange how far away I got from you,” 
she said, one evening. ‘How could I get so far 
away? It was because I thought you wanted to 
prevent me from joining Sven.” a : 
“But you don’t want to do so any longer?” I 
asked. | | 

‘No, no,” she said. ‘‘Now I want to stay with - 
you. But I have had so many horrid and stupid 
thoughts during this time.’’ Her voice became so 
like that of a child confessing some misdeed, that- 
I had to smile when I heard her. “‘No, you must 
not laugh,” she went on; “because it is the truth. 
I thought you didn’t understand me, and I said so, 
too. Can you forgive me?”’ 

She spoke with such profound earnestness that 


214 BOOK ABOUT LITTLE BROTHER 


I was deeply moved. To prevent her from becom- 
ing still more stirred up, I answered in a tone that 
I tried to make as gay as possible, ‘Is that the 
only sin you have on your conscience ?”’ 

‘No, no,” she said. ‘But I know of no other 
one toward you.” Then she continued, snuggling 
closer to me: “But it is the worst thing I could 
think or say, as I know that no one has understood 
me except you. Not one of those people I talked 
to when I felt so lonely and miserable and thought 
that everything would go to pieces within me.” 

She shivered as she spoke, and put her hand to 
her forehead. “‘It is all over now,” she said. 
‘Everything is so peaceful and clear. But there is 
one more thing you should know.”’ She raised her- 
self up and gazed at me with a glance so deep and 
bright as if she wished me to look straight to the 
bottom offer soul. “You should know what was 
the worst thing of all,” she said. ““When I thought 
that I must die and follow Sven, and when I 
thought this so strongly that you seemed to glide 
away from me, as everything else did, and the 
world seemed deserted and empty—then I was 
frightened, oh, so dreadfully frightened, because 
I believed that I should be forced to—do it my- 
self! That was the worst thing of all. But now I 
know that I shall never need to do that. That 
much God has promised me.” 

‘‘Do you mean to say that you will leave me 


BOOK ABOUT LITTLE BROTHER 215 


anyhow ?”’ I asked. My-own words set me trem- 
bling, and I observed that my voice nearly gave 
way. 

“T don’t know,” she said, leaning her head on 
my arm again. “I merely know that I never shall 
need to do it myself.” 

She became silent, and I could find no words to 
answer her. I glanced at her. She looked herself 
again, as I remembered her from the years of our 
happiness. She appeared more frail and youthful, 
and the calm superseding her former feverish dis- 
quiet colored her every movement with a trustful 
affectionateness that brought me joy and sadness 
in the same breath. 

When she was in bed and I went in to bid her 
good-night, she looked at me again with the same 
deep and bright glance. ‘‘Please don’t mind my 
talk about your having taken away my faith. You 
never did. It was mere imagination. Oh, I have 
imagined so many ee I fear my life has been 
nothing but imagination.” 

A painful expression appeared on hee face. To 
rid her of it, I stroked her forehead and said: “I 
don’t think I did. That much is true. But I ought 
to have understood that what you believed was 
precious to you—so precious that I never should 
have brought you face to face with even the possi- 
bility of other thoughts.”’ 

Some inner light seemed to brighten her whole 


216 . BOOK ABOUT- LITTLE BROTHER 


fies, With a faint, tired cry of joy she put her 
arms about me and said good-night. 

I put out the candle beside her bed and left the 
room softly. My heart was overflowing with grat- 
itude for all she had said. It was as if she had 
given me a treasure to be cherished. 

The moment I thought of this, I was struck by 
the fact that I already seemed to be seeking for her. 
in memory. “She is leaving me,” I thought. To 
my astonishment I noticed, that now I could harbor 


this thought without bitterness, merely because I 
was closer to her than I had ever been before. 


“She will not die,” I thought the next moment. 
“She is going to live.” And I discovered no con- 
tradiction in the sequence of my thoughts. 


[ sat in my room, trying to read. But I was too 
agitated, too happy over the rare wealth that had 
become mine. And suddenly I saw my wife as she 
was during our summer by the west coast —as she 
was at the moment when she turned from the win- 
dow in the pilot’s house toward me, and I could 
feel ourselves united in a common love to the un- 
fathomable sea that knows no bounds. There was 
a resemblance between what I experienced then 
and what now filled me with happiness and hope. 
At the same time I recalled how many long years 
I had been yearning for the sea. 

Like a mirage, there rises in my mind a long 
forgotten memory. A boy stands on a tall rock 


BOOK ABOUT LIFTLE BROTHER 217 


looking out over the sea. The rock is steep, and 
at its feet rage the wildly frothing waves. The 
boy has opened his coat. He holds it extended with 
both hands so that it gives the effect of a sail. He 
finds a divine delight in being able to defy the - 
storm that threatens to cast him from the rock 
into the sea. This delight is cut short by a voice 
shouting his name through the storm. A pair of 
arms stronger than his own seize him and carry 
him off forcibly, both from the dangerous spot and 
from the view of the sea that cries aloud of perils 
and of bravery. 

The boy was I, and I smile a melancholy smile 
as the hours of the night pass by unnoticed and I 
sit alone staring at what is about to happen. Now 
I have what the boy longed for, but the storm has 
carried me farther out than I was minded. Now I 
wish that the elements might subside, or that some 
one stronger than myself might carry me off from 
the danger which I thought could never frighten 
me. 

At the same time I know this to be impossible. 
And with a shameful, shivery feeling, I bethink 
myself of my wife’s suffering, which is greater 
than mine. : 


Chapter XII 


Nor many days later I was called home by a 
telephone message, informing me that my wife had 
had a bad attack of convulsions. It was a serious 
matter, they told me, and I was asked to hasten 
my return. | 

That day I had bid my wife good-bye before 
going to work. It was the first of May, and we 
had discussed how to make the day pleasant for 
the boys, as our custom had been in the past. And 
to begin with, I found it impossible to grasp that 
there could be any reality in what I had just heard. 

Accordingly I used the time left before the de- 
parture of the train to buy a little fruit and other 
things required by the occasion. It could only be 
a passing trouble, I said to myself, as I sat in the 
car loaded with packages. To pass the time, I 
picked up a newspaper and tried to read. For a 
while I succeeded because I struggled to take every- 
thing in the most matter-of-fact way possible, 
hoping thus to prevent my anxiety from over- 
whelming me, at least while I remained on the 
train. But the nearer I approached home, the more 
I felt the anxiety underlying everything I did. My 
thoughts would not keep pace with my eyes that 
were moving automatically down the columns of 
the newspaper. Soon I noticed that my eyes were 


BOOK ABOUT LITTLE BROTHER 219 


straying without purpose from one column to the 
other. I folded the paper together, and with a 
pang these thoughts flashed through my mind: 
“You are going toward what you have feared. 
It is useless to deny that you have feared it all 
the time. You have never believed that she could 
live. You have merely tried to make yourself be- 
lieve she could live. Now the hour has come, and 
you cannot escape it.” ; 
An unnatural calm seized me. The reason was, 
perhaps, that I was going toward a final certitude, 
in the face of which I should know that all further 
struggle had become futile. ‘God, if. she must 
die,” I muttered, ‘‘let her at least die painlessly.” 
And still I wondered how I could be so composed. 
I looked about on the platform when the train 
stopped. I expected some one to meet me, but no 
one was there. ‘Then she is still alive,” I thought, 
with the same peculiarly lucid composure. The 
next moment I thought: “Perhaps it means that 
everything is over. They have understood that I 
did not wish to be upset before so many strange 
eyes.” Yet I maintained the same strange numb- 
ness even in the face of this possibility. I started 
slowly to walk homeward. I climbed the hill with 
heavy steps. I looked up at her window, and I 
thought I saw her as she looked when she was 
dressed for the first time after her first illness. 
She had draped a light-colored cape over the black 


220 BOOK ABOUT LITTLE BROTHER 


dress she always wore nowadays, and the window | 
was wide open. She leaned out and waved her 
hand at me, impatient because I had not looked up 
more quickly, and she trembled with eagerness at 
giving me the pleasure of seeing her up and walk- 
ing without support. This memory flashed through 
my mind, and instinctively I looked up, although I 
knew well enough that no one could be at the 
window waving me a welcome. 

Then a new thought laid hold on me: ‘‘For more 

than a year and a half you have been expecting 
her to die, and you have mourned her as if she 
already had passed away. Now you have no emo- 
tion left. Your sorrow has burned out, consumed 
by its own flame, and now there is nothing. but 
ashes left.”’ 

A few moments later I stood in the bedroom 
and saw that my wife was unconscious. I listened 
for her breathing, took her by the hand, and tried 
to make her hear me. I understood that all efforts 
were futile, and so I myself went downstairs to 
get the doctor on the telephone, not because I 
thought it necessary, but because’I felt it to be a 
thing I must do. He promised to come. Slowly I 
retraced my steps up the stairway, where, through 
the open door of the sickroom, I could hear my 
wife’s breathing that alone seemed to dominate 
the otherwise silent house. 

Then I caught sight of Olof, iedind: on the 


BOOK ABOUT LITTLE BROTHER 221 


stairs as if listening. I put my hand on his shoul- 
der, meaning to pass him. But the boy stopped me. 

“Why does mamma snore in that peculiar way ?”” 
he said. He flushed as if he had said something 
improper, and tried vainly to smile. — 

“That is the sound you generally hear,” I an- 
swered, ‘“‘when a person is about to die.”’ 

The boy did not burst into tears. He merely 
nodded and looked away. 

“He, like me, has expected it,” I thought. | 

- At the same time I noticed both how big he was, 
and how small. 

Then it was as something had melted within me. 
‘‘Now comes the worst,” I thought. “What you 
have not yet faced. The children—the children!” 
And so, while the nurse sat alone by the sickbed, I 
went downstairs with the boys to have dinner and 
~~ to discuss what was about to happen. 

How we talked together that day and those that 
followed! How we lowered our voices as if fear- 
ful of disturbing her whose ears could not be 
reached by any sound! 

My boys seemed unexpectedly of my own age 
—like two contemporaries who alone had shared 
everything with me, and who alone understood 
everything. To them it was no strange matter that 
mamma should join Sven. She had told them about 
it so many times. To them there was nothing per- 
turbing in the thought that mamma should pass 


222 BOOK ABOUT LITTLE BROTHER 


away_because she did not wish to live. They were 
not troubled by any theories. They did not pass 
judgment. They did not try to expound what to 
them was simple and exalted. They knew merely 
that if mamma should die and leave them, the rea- 
son was that she had grown ill and weak, and had 
no more strength to live. If anyone had told them 
that their mother thereby proved herself less fond 
of them, they would have laughed or become 
incensed. 

Now they told me many things I had not heard. 
And as we talked, I seemed to catch the sound of 
my own sorrow as if reaching me from a great 
distance, and yet from within me. I understood 
that it would come closer some time, and that it 
would bring relief. But for the moment it could 
not conquer the composure that reigned within me, 
and that I retained even when the doctor came 
out of the sickroom to tell me what I already knew. 

But before he arrived, | was summoned to the 
bedroom by a loud cry. When I entered, I found 
my wife in convulsions that seemed to begin at her 
face and pass downward until they shook her 
whole body. We could do nothing. And those 
dreadful attacks returned at intervals. 

The doctor stopped them by an injection, and 
the former peacefulness was restored, but con- 
sciousness did not return. For two whole days 
she lay in the same coma that held her when I first 


BOOK ABOUT LITTLE BROTHER 223 


arrived. Long after the convulsions had ceased, I 
seemed to see her face twist and twitch in the same 
frightful manner. Then [recalled the deathbed of 
Sven. I remembered seeing the same thing then, 
from the twisting of face and mouth to the shaking 
of the limbs and the cramped clenching of the 
fists. And I recalled her words: ‘‘When I die, I 
shall die just as Sven did.’ I recalled smiling to 
myself when I heard thosé words, thinking them 
a manifestation of overwrought nerves. Now, 
when they had come true, I could not get away 
from them. How could she know? If she did not 
know, how could she tell with such assurance? 
Was this coincidence nothing but a chance? Would 
it be right, in any event, to brand a thing as chance 
merely because one did not wish to have it 
explained? 

‘I sat for hours by my wife’s bed, leaving the 
room only to get fresh air and rest. With the boys 
I sat right by the bed, and we whispered to each 
other, giving voice to words that would never 
recur, and that none of us can recall now. I slept 
fully dressed on the bed beside Elsa —my little 
Elsa, who would never wake again. I kept watch 
alone, not only to give the nurse a chance to rest, 
but so that I might possess the memory of a few 
hours at least, when no one but we two occupied | 
that room of death. 

It is said that the entire life of a dying person 


224 BOOK ABOUT LITTLE BROTHER 


sweeps through his memory just before the end 

comes. I think it is quite as it should be, to review 

one’s whole life at that moment, and perhaps in 

a new light. I know personally that, during this 

last night, when daylight was so long in coming, 

and when the boys had gone to bed utterly tired 

out, I saw my own life and all that she and I had 

_lived in common as I had never seen it before. And 

/ I saw that out of what she had told me, I had 

\ charged my mind with what I rather should have 

\ tried to forget, while I had forgotten what, above 

| all, should have been stored up in my mind. I had 

cherished whatever she said in accordance with 

‘my own desire, and I had forgotten whatever she 

/said in opposition to it. While believing myself to 

\ be doing everything for her, I had merely labored 

/ for myself and my own happiness. All I had lived 

. through became concentrated in this thought as in 
a single focal point. 

She had drawn me into the very shadow of 
death. That much I saw now, as a grey day broke 
outside the window and a ring of dawn outlined 
the horizon. On my own accord, and of my free 
will, I had never gone there, but would rather 
have fled and forgotten that anything of the kind 
existed. Sitting by her bed, it seemed that I knew 
no more of the world than when I first came to 
life in this maze of contradictions and took my 
first steps through it in constant bewilderment at 


BOOK ABOUT LITTLE BROTHER 225 


all I encountered. There had always been an ele- 
ment of wonder within me. I had always had a 
feeling that only one half of what I experienced was 
real. I had always, so to speak, projected myself 
into the future, from what was toward the un- 
known that was to come. I had always dreamed of 
happiness, and happiness had never appeared to 
me in any form but that of a home. I had won 
this happiness; won it as hardly one out of a thou- 
sand may; but death, of whom I would never 
think, had trailed me invisibly. He took my little 
boy with the golden hair and the eyes of an angel. © 
When the boy died, death bent over me more 
closely than ever, folding his black wings about 
my house and not letting me go until he had de- 
prived me and mine of her who to us was more 
precious than anything else in life, because she was 
more precious to us than life itself. 

I rose and looked out. I listened to her breath- 
ing, and I could not make myself realize that it 
was my wife who lay there doomed to die. I bent 
over her and moistened her lips and tongue with 
water. I watched her until everything became 
black before my eyes and I could see nothing at all. 
But I seemed to be very close to her real self; and 
if within her remained a memory that, although in- 
accessible to me and separated from what we mor- 
tals call existence, yet labored and struggled with 
her own life, then I knew myself to be surely a part _ 


226 BOOK ABOUT LITTLE BROTHER 


of it. There I should be as I could never see my- 
self, and as no one but she could ever see me. 

While my thoughts circled in this manner about 
what we two had experienced together, I forgot 
myself and saw only her. Young and affectionate 
she came to meet me, but under all the happiness 
that radiated from her and put elasticity into her 
steps, there lay a melancholy that was the more 
potent because it remained unexpressed so long. 
Very, very early I realized, as I seemed now to 
recall, that her whole being moved on a plane not 
shared by others. She was created to taste happi- 
ness and then die, and a day came when any effort 
o make her live was cruelty. She could not mourn 
for a while and then forget. She could only mourn 
and die. Forgetful of all else in the face of her 
destiny, I should have known that she always spoke 
the truth, but never more so than when her speech 
seemed strange and impossible to me. And never 
was she more truthful than when grief sent the 
words to her lips and she asked my permission to 
die. 7 
Why did I not let her? Why did I try to force 
her against her will and beyond her power? Why 
did I fail to understand that nothing but a tre- 
mendous over-exertion had enabled her to come 
and go in our home for two long years, smiling 
with us who wanted to smile, and playing with us 
who wanted to play? : 


BOOK ABOUT LITTLE BROTHER 227 


How could I be so cruel? How is it possible to 
be so cruel out of a mere failure to see clearly? 

All these questions fused finally into a new one: 
how could she love me when I caused her so much 
pain against my own will? 

With a sense of being able to follow her 
thoughts, already separated from mine, I seemed 
sure of having done all this against my will, and 
of knowing what her feelings for me must be, al- 
though I had never been willing to believe it! But 
no answer would ever come to that final question. 
She would never wake out of her stupor. And 
with my heart full of despair, I must sooner or 
later turn toward the new life without her that was 
waiting for me. 

Thus I strove to imagine the road taken by her 
thoughts as she slipped more and more under the 
spell of death. It was as if I had surrendered 
_ myself and my own life to death; as if she and I 
together had settled our score with the world. 
Everything within and without assumed such giddy 
proportions that nothing seemed within my reach. 
In all this there was no consolation — nothing but 
a distressing farewell. Slowly the hours passed by, 
and already I was approaching that moment of. 
irresistible fatigue when one’s eyes close and one’s 
hands are clasped in prayer that everything may 
be over. 

Then the regular breathing suddenly ceased, and 


228 BOOK ABOUT LITTLE BROTHER 


my heart seemed to turn into stone. I believed 
that death had arrived, and I ran to rouse the 
boys. They came still drunk with sleep and very 
solemn. As they sat down by the bed, I recalled 
what she had said once: *‘When I die, I want no 
one but you and the boys to be present. After all, 
I belong only to you.’ 

Thus we sat now, and while puzzling over ‘as 
significance of her light breathing and waiting the 
end, we observed that her eyes were moving as if 
she had struggled to open them, and we saw her 
turn in the direction of Sven’s portrait.on the wall, 
and we heard her say, “‘Nenne.” 

The little word came feebly and almost inaudi- 
bly, but still she had spoken. Convulsively we 
grasped each others’ hands, and our tears flowed, 
not in sorrow, but in joy that we had heard her 
voice once more. 

From that moment she was aware of our pres- 
ence. From that moment there was a farewell in 
every mien, every movement, every word. Hear- 
ing our voices, she raised one eyelid just as Sven 
had done, and we could notice that she recognized 
us and was conscious of our endearments. 

Once more she uttered Sven’s name as if wishing 
to tell us that she saw him and was on her way to 
him. Then she sank back into herself, and we sat 
with bated breath, watching for a sign that she had 
not yet left us and passed away. 


BOOK ABOUT LITTLE BROTHER 229 
Then she opened her left eye again, as Sven 


had done, and her glance sought mine. I bent down. 


over her and saw that she was trying to speak. 
But she had not the strength, and with an expres- 
sion of unspeakable grief she sank back into the 
torpor that is the herald of death. Several times 


she repeated her effort. Each time her face as- | 


sumed that expression of distressed impotence, and 
each time it became more heart-breaking. It was 
as if she were no longer one of us, but nevertheless 
wished to say something before she went away 
forever —as if she could not die without having 
communicated her message to us who should live 
after her. It was horrible to witness her struggle, 
but more horrible was the possibility of missing 
her final word. Once more I bent over her, and in 
my desperation I poured a whispered appeal into 
her ear. Then’she opened her eyes and looked at 
me, and I saw that she had heard me. _With-as 
pended on her words, I put my ear close to her 
mouth. 

Then I heard her voice. At no other time has 
a voice reached my ear from such a distance. It 
was so faint as to be barely distinguishable. It 
could hardly be herself, but merely her spirit, that 
spoke. But her words came clearly and distinctly, 
and no one but I could hear them: “I . . . . love 

you el 25>. eoungeh 


mr, 


Sin” 
fon 


much. tension_as if my whole future life had- de/ i ae 


es caer 


230 BOOK ABOUT LITTLE BROTHER 


I must have screamed with grief, for I noticed 
hands that took hold of me and supported me. - 
And the cry that broke from my lips must have 
reached my dying wife, since it wrung from her 
a groan of agonized sorrow. It meant that she 
had heard me without being able to put her lifeless 
hand on my head. I4ean recall the sound of that 
groan whenever I think of it. 

To give voice to those words she had struggled 
for hours. When she had uttered them, she sank 
back into quietude. Peace fell on her face. There 
was nothing more she wished, nothing she re- 
quired. Her account with life was settled as soon 
as she had been able to express her love for the 
boys and me before she died. 

A few hours later her eyes closed forever. It 
happened without a struggle, quietly and gently 
as when a candle goes out. 

/ She lived her own life, and she died her own 
~ death. 

She was so weak that she escaped the struggle 
of death. She had struggled long enough before. 

But she found strength to give us a word to 
cherish and to live by when she was gone. Her 
love was stronger than death. 

Blessed be her memory! 


_. Se 
Ser of 
eee 4 Ge.” 


Chapter XIII 


I BROKE the letter lying in the top drawer of the 
little chest from my childhood days that had be- 
come Sven’s shrine. It read as follows: - 

I have talked so many times of death, but some 
time it must come. Whoever be the first to find 
this sheet must show it to the person or persons 
who are to have charge of my funeral. O God, as 
I write this word—how I wish that I were as 
near the grave as the word is to the paper! Of 
course, I want to live for my loved ones, who have 
done for me more than human beings ever did for 
one another, and I am trying as hard asI can. But 
if I fail—and so it seems —lI wish to be buried in 
my white dress. All the linen used by my angel 
child, Nenne, is in the bottom drawer of the chest. 
There are towels, too, if such be needed. But let 
them remain with me. Let as many of his things 
be put in my coffin as there be room for. I shall 
rest easily even on the hardest of his little 


One more final wish. If I die at home, try if 
possible to make my last bed in Nenne’s room. 

Thank you for everything, for everything. Iam 
an unfortunate being, who cannot live in spite of 


all tenderness and love. .... 
Your Elsa 


232 BOOK ABOUT LITTLE BROTHER 


She was buried in her white dress, which she 
had not used since her thoughts turned with fond- 
ness to the earth and all that belongs to it. Every- 
thing was done in accordance with her wish, and 
her last bed was prepared in Sven’s little room. 
There she lay with her wealth of black hair spread 
over the white dress, and all the blossoms of spring 
surrounding her. Against the little window behind 
her rose a purple azalea, and yellow roses were 

scattered all over the bed. 

She looked as if she were sleeping, and her face 
seemed rejuvenated by death. 

Thus she joined Sven, as she had said she would, 
and therefore this is “the book about Little 
Brother,” who came to be his mother’s angel, but 
not in the manner we had hoped. When he left, 
he took her with him. 


Chapter XIV 


BUT this book is also the story of a struggle with 
death. It is the story of a man who fought and 
was defeated, but who is not ashamed of his defeat. 

I have been far abroad. since then, and many 
people have I seen. But everything remained for- 
eign to me and lifeless, until this book was written. 
It was written during bright summer nights, where | 
the outermost islands gave way to the open sea. 
And it was written by a lonely man, who is no 
longer alone. 

During long weeks he looked out over the sea, ~ 
which, like any human life worth living, is never 
fully at rest. There he saw the beacon lights 
blinking above the troubled waters. Should the 
beacons be extinguished, still the stars will sparkle 
in the sky. | 








1882. 
1883. 
1883. 
1884. 
1885. 
1887. 
1887. 
1888. 
1888. 
1889. 
1889. 


1890. 
1891. 


1892. 
1892. 
1894. 
1894. 


1894. 


1894. 


1895. 
1896. 


1896. 
1897. 
1898. 
1898. 
1898. 


1899. 
T1900. 


190!. 


A CHRONOLOGICAL LIST 


of Gustaf af Geijerstam’s principal works 


Bleak Days. (Grdkallt). Stories. 

Fleecy Clouds. (Strémoln). Stories. 

Contemporaries. (Ur samtiden). Literary studies. 

Poor People. I. (Fattigt folk). Stories. 

Erik Grane. (Erik Grane). A novel from Uppsala. 

Pastor Hallin. (Pastor Hallin). A novel. 

For the Present. (Tills vidare). Stories. 

Issues of the Day. (Stridsfragor fir dagen). Five lectures. 

Father-in-law. (Svdrfar). A comedy in four acts. 

Poor People. II. (Fattigt folk). Stories. 

The New-Year’s Night of the Centuries. (Seklernas nydrs- 
natt). A fairy play in one act. 

The Sheriff’s Tales. (Kronofogdens berdattelser). Stories. 

Never in this Life. (Aldrig i lifvet). A comedy in three 
acts... 

Satires and Dreams, (Satirer och drémmar). Poems. 

Stockholm Stories. (Stockholmsnoveller). Stories. 

Criminals. (Férbrytare). A tragedy in two scenes. 

New Conflicts. (Nya brytningar). Five lectures on litera- 
ture. 

Lars Anders and Jan Anders and Their Children. (Lars 
Anders och Jan Anders och deras barn). A rustic com- 
edy in three acts. 

Per Olsson and His Old Woman. (Per Olsson och hans 
kadring). A comedy of peasant life, in three acts. 

Medusa’s Head. (Medusas hufvud). A novel. 

The Struggle for Love. (Kampen om karlek). Four stories 
about marriage. 

My Boys. (Mina pojkar), Stories. 

Lost in Life. (Vilse i lifvet). A novel. 

The Saas Island. (Det yttersta skdret). A sea-coast . 
novel. 

otras Peasant Stories. I & II. (Samlade allmogeberat- 
telser). : 

The arene of Marriage. (Aktenskapets komedi). A 
novel. 

Happy People. (Lyckliga manniskor). A novel. 

The — About Little Brother. (Boken om lillebror). A 
novel. 

Woman’s Power, (Kvinnomakt). A novel. 


236 


1902. 


1903. 
1904. 


1904. 
- £905. 
1905. 
1906. 
1907. 
1908. 


1908. 
1908. 


1908. 
1909. 


1909. 


Nils Tufyesson.and His Mother. (Nils Tufvesson och hans 
moder). A peasant novel. 

Forest and Sea. (Skogen och sjén). Stories. 

Karin Brandt’s Dream. (Karin Brandts drém). A novel 
of olden time. 

The Battle of Souls. (Sjalarnes kamp). A novel. 

Andreas Vik. (Andreas Vik). Tales of the islands. 

Dangerous Forces. (Farliga makter). A novel. 

The Brothers Mork. (Bréderna Mérk). A manorial novel. 

The Eternal Riddle. (Den eviga gatan). A novel. 

Other People’s Business. (Andras affdrer). A comedy in 
four acts. 

“Wonderful Augusta.” (Stiliga Agusta). A comedy in four | 
acts. 

Big Claes and Little Claes. (Stor-Klas och Lill-Klas.) A 
fairy play in seven scenes. 

The Old Manor. (Den gama herrgardsallén). A novel. 

Riddles of Solitude. (Ensamhetens gator). A re-issue of 
peasant stories and novels, in three parts. 

Thora. (Thora). A novel of olden time, 


PUBLICATIONS OF 


THE AMERICAN-SCANDINAVIAN 
FOUNDATION 


Committee on Publications 


WILLIAM WITHERLE LAWRENCE, Professor of English 
in Columbia University, Chairman. 


CuarLEs S. PETERSON, Publisher, Chicago. 

Joun A. Gabe, author of Charles the XII. 

Hanna Astrup Larsen, Editor AMERICAN-SCANDI- 
NAVIAN REVIEW. 

Henry Gopparp Leacu, Secretary of the Foundation. 


SCANDINAVIAN CLASSICS 
I. Comedies by Holberg: Jeppe of the Hill, The 


Political Tinker, Erasmus Montanus. 


Translated by Oscar JAMES CAMPBELL, JrR., and FREDERIC 
SCHENCK. 


II. Poems by Tegner: The Children of the Lord's 
Supper and Fritiof’s Saga. 

Translated by Henry WaApsworTH LONGFELLOW and W. LEWERY 
BLACKLEY. 

ITI. Poems and Songs by Bjornstjerne Bjérnson. 


Translated in the original metres, with an Introduction and 
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An historical play, translated, with an Introduction, by Epwin - 
BJORKMAN. 


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Translated from old Icelandic, with an Introduction and Notes, 
by ARTHUR GILCHRIST BRODEUR. 


VI. Modern Icelandic Plays by Jéhann Sigurjéns- 
son: Eyvind of the Hills and The Hraun Farm. 


Translated by HENNINGE KroHn SCHANCHE. 


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Century by J. P. Jacobsen. 


An historical romance, translated, with an Introduction, by 
HANNA ASTRUP LARSEN. 


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A Norse Epic, translated by WiLLIAM Morton PAYNE. 


IX. Anthology of Swedish Lyrics, from 1750) to 
I9I5. 


Selections from the greatest of Swedish lyrists, translated by 
CHARLES WHARTON STORK. 


X & XI. Gésta Berling’s Saga by Selma Lagerlof. 


The English translation of LiLL1zg TupEER, completed and care- 
fully edited. 


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Chapel, by C. J. L. Almquist. 


A Sentimental Journey with a practical ending, and the Tale of 
a Curate, translated, with an Introduction, by ADoLPH BURNETT 
BENSON. 


XIII. Niels Lyhne by J. P. Jacobsen. 


A psychological novel, translated by HANNA AstruP LARSEN. 


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Translated by Siete CoFFIN EASTMAN, with an Introduction by 
JuLius Emi. OLson. 


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Tales from the exploits of Charles XII, translated by CHARLES 
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XVII. Early Plays: Cataline, The Warrior's Bar- 
row, Olaf Liljekrans by Henrik Ibsen. 


Translated by ANDERS ORBECK. 


XVIII. The Book about Little Brother: A Story 


of Married Life by Gustaf af Geitjerstam. 
Translated by Edwin ByORKMAN, 
Price $2.00 each 


SCANDINAVIAN MONOGRAPHS 


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Price $7.50 


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A famous treatise, translated from the Norwegian of the Thir- 
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MARCELLUus LARSON. 

Price $5.00 


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Revised and expanded for this edition by the author, the late 
Axet OLrik, in collaboration with the translator, Lez M. Hot- 
LANDER. ; 

Price $5.00 


In Preparation 


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By Cart G. Laurin of Sweden, Emit Hannover of Denmark, and 
Jens Tyus of Norway; with a foreword by CurisTIAN BRINTON. 


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For information regarding the above publications address the 
SECRETARY OF THE AMERICAN-SCANDINAVIAN 
FOUNDATION 


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